"Youngster" Memorial Plaque for Children in Immigration Detention

In May 2015, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Nick Galvin reported a mysterious plaque that had appeared on a Sydney wall. The plaque, on the corner of George and Barrack sts in Sydney's CBD, turns Caroline Rothwell's whimsical sculpture "Youngster" into a memorial for refugee children.
Drawing on language that Australians would have been very familiar with from the ANZAC centenary celebrations just a month before, the plaque begins, "Lest We forget Them."

It continues:

Children seeking asylum in Australia are kept in detention as part of a government policy which inflictc harm on refugees fleeing violence and persecution.
Their suffering is our shame.
Here at this site we remember them and together call out for change. 

The plaque is very small and barely noticeable, yet it is a strong call to all those who pass by the busy corner to call to mind children held in Australia's detention centre. It was installed in the wake of a damning report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, Forgotten Children, released at the end of 2014.  The report's title echoes the 2004 Forgotten Australians Report into the treatment of Australian children in state care.
The sculpture the plaque has attached itself to is a small bronze sculpture of a young person in a hoodie. It stands at about chest height for most adults: a very small person covered by too-big-for-it clothes. Artist Caroline Rothwell was quoted as saying she was honoured her sculpture was being used in this way.
"I agree with the sentiment. Also part of my idea with the work is that these little hooded figures we generally see as a threatening form are actually vulnerable."
The building on which the plaque was attached is owned by the City of Sydney and leased by luxury clothing brand Burberry. So far, the plaque has been allowed to remain.

Questions:

If you know of anyone who was involved in the creation of this plaque, I would love to hear from them. Email ali.phd.map@gmail.com

Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project (and planned memorial)

The Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project (PFFPMP) is an arts-based memory project based in an area of the Sydney suburb of Parramatta which has been used since early colonial days to house women and children in institutional settings. The project is driven by artist and memory activist Bonney Djuric, herself a former inmate at Parramatta and founder of the Parra Girls group.   

While there is as yet no formal memorial on site, Bonney and other artists have used art and community creative events to make the history of the site more visible. PFFPMP works out of a single room in the precinct grounds, but has managed to turn the two storey building into a gallery space, hosting exhibitions and allowing artists to interpret the now-empty spaces on the second floor.

"The Forgotten Ones" installation by Bonney Djuric

 

 As well as this, the site has been used for gathering of ex-inmates (known as Parragirls), a conference and various community days. There are plans underway to develop a children's garden, to transform a site that was once a place of pain into a place of joy.
PFFPMP is the only Australian site connected to the international Site of Conscience movement, which is aimed at using places where past human rights abuses have occurred to educate people for a better future. However, the future use of the site is still uncertain. The Female Factory Precinct is still being assessed for national heritage status.  As an outcome of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a consultation process has started to develop a government-funded memorial, although this project will not formally involved either Parra Girls or PFFPMP. Informal artistic responses to the history of the site are already in place.  

Coming and Going Child Migrants Memorial, Sydney

"Coming and Going" by Sydney sculptor Sasha Reid,  is a playful aluminium cut-out, like a paper chain that sits on a section of grass near the entrance to the National Maritime Museum. It is close to a circular driveway used by buses, and is visible from Murray Street. The area is reportedly used as a meeting place for school groups, but it is certainly not a prominent location.

This memorial was installed by the NSW State Government (with funding from the Australian Government) to acknowledge the experience of children who were sent to Australia from the UK and Malta during the 20th Century. Often the children were given inaccurate information about their birth families (including being told parents were dead when they were not) and many suffered various forms of institutional abuse.

The memorial plaque reads: 

This memorial is dedicated to child migrants from the United Kingdom and Malta who had to leave their families and country of birth during the years 1912 - 1967. After arriving by ship, these children faced an unknown future in New South Wales. Many endured personal hardships, some experienced great suffering. They and their families have made and continue to make a valuable contribution to their communities and to Australia. 

"Coming and Going" is similar to Judith Forrest's "Unfolding Lives" sculpture in Perth, which acknowledges Forgotten Australians, in that it references a childhood toy that might have been available to children with little else. But apart from the words on the small plaque, there is nothing to disrupt the sense of fun. So for many people who see it in passing, it is just another piece of playful public art. This seems strange for a sculptor who has experience in creating memorial art; Sasha Reid was also responsible for the memorial to victims of the Bali bombings at Coogee, NSW. 

The memorial is located near the 'Welcome Wall' which leads down to the harbour. The Welcome Wall was created as a way to acknowledge people who have migrated to Australia. Like the wall, and despite the title of the sculpture, which suggests movement, this memorial seems to be more focussed on marking the arrival of the child migrants than on telling the story of before or after.

Questions:

I wonder what brief the artist was given? Were they asked to acknowledge the pain and suffering caused by child migration, or simply to create something relating to 'childhood'? 

Stolen Generations Memorial, Sydenham Green Park

In a corner of Sydenham Green, a green space in Marrickville, Sydney, stands a sandstone and
concrete wall. Its surface is covered with boomerangs, an easily recognised Aboriginal motif that maybe in this context can be a metaphor for return. Two niches contain water bowls. A metal plaque is inscribed with these words of testimony from Link Up (NSW), an organisation that supports Aboriginal people separated from their families:

We may go home, but we cannot relive our childhood's. We may reunite with our mothers, fathers,
sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, communities, but we cannot re-live the 20, 30 40 years that we spent
without their love and care, and they cannot undo the grief and mourning they felt when we were
separated from them. We can go home to ourselves as Aboriginals, but this does not erase the attacks
inflicted on our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, by caretakers who thought their mission was to
eliminate us as Aboriginals.

A post on Monument Australia identifies the artist as Joe Hirst. However, despite its image being used on the cover of the Sydenham Green Draft Plan of Management in September 2013 the artist is not acknowledged in the document, and no mention is made of this work on the Marrickville Council's Public Art web page.

The wall seems to have been created as a memorial to the Stolen Generations, those Aboriginal people who were taken from their families as children as part of a Government policy of assimilation. The water bowls are a traditional memorial device, representing pools of tears shed. However, rather than simply a place of mourning, the text on the plaque makes this memorial challenging and confrontational. Nonetheless, the Marrickville Council describes it simply as part of telling the story of the local area.

Questions:

Is this memorial used for Sorry Day (26 May) or other local commemorations of the Stolen
Generations?
Why was this sculpture created in 1999?

Illa Kuri Sacred Dreaming Track, East Perth

Winding along the edge of the Derbal Yerrigan (Swan River), near the entry of the Claisebrook Inlet in East Perth, Illa Kuri by Toogarr Morrison is generally understood as a public artwork rather than as a memorial. Nonetheless, Morrison has made use of many elements used in other memorials looked at on this site to tell the story of the loss of land and culture since colonisation. 

A plaque on the one of the stones at the beginning of the bath reads: 

This sacred path representing the Illa Kuri journey is where initiates walked through the Claisebrook valley on the way to their homes. The path leads from one freshwater lake to another. These are represented by the twelve granite rocks that stand as silent sentries.

The names of the tribes and totems are there to guide you through the sacred Illa Kuri dreaming and the sacred totem emblems which gave the indigenous people their identity.

The sacred dreaming path is never ending.

Despite the hopeful note at the end of the plaque, I understand Illa Kuri as a memorial to a lost landscape. This area of Australia is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, but most of these lakes and wetlands have been filled in or polluted since the arrival of Europeans. 

The Nyungar people are the traditional owners of the South West corner of Australia, although Morrison favours talking about the Bibulmun nation rather than the Nyungar people, since Nyungar is the name for ‘man’ in the language of his people. He is a well respected local artist and Elder. 

One of the reasons the East Perth area has a strong connection with Aboriginal people is because it was a camping ground on the edge of the city at a time, at the beginning of the last century, when they were banned from Perth after curfew. That connection has been maintained throughout the 20th century. 

The area around the East Perth foreshore has been renamed Ngango Batta’s Mooditcher, translated as ‘Sunshine’s Living Strength’ and, according to the City of Perth, is now seen as a place of reconciliation and renewal.

Unfolding Lives memorial to the Forgotten Australians

The "Unfolding Lives" memorial is located in the Perth cultural centre, outside the WA Museum.

This art work was commissioned by the Federal and State (WA) governments to serve as a memorial to the lost childhood of the group of people known as the Forgotten Australians; people who suffered abuse and/or neglect within Australia’s state care institutions during the 20th century. This story is an important part of Australian’s history—some of those abused were child migrants sent from England supposedly for a ‘better life’. Others were Aboriginal children taken from their parents as part of what we now call the Stolen Generations.

The commission was organised by respected public art curator Andra Kins’s Urban Thresholds consultancy and designed by artist Judith Forest in collaboration with writer Terri-ann White. The form of the sculpture relates to its meaning as a memorial to lost childhood; it is in the shape of a ‘chatterbox’, a simple children’s game using folded paper and text.

The chatterbox and two accompanying metal tiles contain fragments of stories or testimony from Redress WA, a WA State Government initiative whereby survivors were able to apply for small ex-gratia payments and receive an apology from the State Government.

The commissioning of the memorial followed the WA Redress program, and a National Apology to the Forgotten Australians in 2009. It was dedicated in December 2010. A plaque identifies both State and Federal Governments as having commissioned the sculpture and explains that it is designed to serve as a reminder to policy makers of the importance of caring for children.

Survivors, including the Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) welcomed the memorial. One survivor, who was part of the memorial project committee, is quoted as saying, “This memorial is for healing. It’s gentle and yet it’s powerful. I just love it.”

Yet, at the same time as the memorial commission was going ahead, there was controversy about the Redress WA process. The Liberal government, having realised that the number of claimants was much higher than expected, cut the maximum payment almost by half. Some survivors said that having been required to tell their story was re-traumatising, and the process did not always lead to people feeling their story had been ‘heard.’

Questions:

Has the Unfolding Lives memorial brought healing? Has it helped to raise awareness, to give survivors that reassurance that their experience has been acknowledged?
Does this memorial create the impression that children only experienced abuse in the past, and that the past is over and done with?
The Perth Cultural Centre website advertises Unfolding Lives as a memorial acknowledging those who overcame adversity. But what about those who have not ‘overcome’ and who continue to be adversely affected by their childhood experiences?

Mary's Place Rape Memorial

Mary’s Place is a laneway in the inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, running just off Bourke St next to the Beresford Hotel. The place name itself is a memorial: it was changed from the original Flood Lane in 1997 as an acknowledgement of the brutal bashing and rape, a year earlier, of a young woman named Mary. The attack was homophobic in nature, in an area with a strong gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.

Since its renaming, Mary’s Place has been the site of two artistic memorials, the first created in 1997 at the same time as the renaming of the laneway. This was part of the Mary’s Place Project instigated by the local organisation the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project and grew out of a spontaneous outpouring of distress and community support in the months following the attack. The memorial consisted of a series of paintings creating a kind of ‘carpet’ effect along the laneway, with each artist bringing a slightly different interpretation. The artwork was destroyed when the Beresford was renovated in the mid-2000s and the laneway was resurfaced. There are few remaining images, apart from those included in a documentary (titled Mary’s Place) created in 1998 and directed by Melissa Lee.
In 2010, the current Lamp for Mary memorial was installed, following a public art commissioning process by the City of Sydney. The artist Mikela Dwyer designed this memorial, which is an oversize hot pink lamp. It is accompanied by text which runs along the side of the laneway, written by poet Prof Michael Taussig after consultation with various community groups. The text is also hot pink, and reads:

“This is a lane with a name and a lamp in memory of the woman who survived being beaten and raped here. She happened to be lesbian. When the sun sets this lamp keeps vigil along with you who read this in silent meditation.”

The text was not installed until 2011, because of some community objections to the use of confronting words such as ‘rape’ and ‘lesbian’, which led to concerns by the Beresford Hotel owners, who also own the pathway along the side of the lane and also provides electricity for the lamp. The Hotel was eventually convinced to support the installation of the text after a community campaign.
Interestingly , although the current memorial simply states that Mary “happened to be lesbian”, the original memorial was very much a project of the Lesbian and Gay community and included important GLBT symbols such as rainbows. The Mary’s Place film also makes clear that Mary was attacked because she was identified as a lesbian, and was subjected to many homophobic insults throughout the attack.

Questions:

• Do you know about the history of the Mary’s Place memorial?
• Why do you think this particular attack motivated the creation of a memorial, when women are subjected to violent attack and rape every day? 
• If you have visited the Mary’s Place memorial, how did it make you feel? Did it make you want to find out more, or take some kind of action?

Der Rufer (The Caller) dedicated to Victims of Torture

Der Rufer, which means "The Caller" in German, is a bronze sculpture of a calling man who stands in walkway outside the Art Gallery of WA.
For people not familiar with Perth, this area is known as the cultural precinct, and has a lot of pedestrian traffic. Most Perth people would have walked past this sculpture many times, but it was only after I started this project that I stopped to have a closer look, and realised the sculpture was dedicated in 1998 to "Victims and Survivors of Torture."
It seems I'm not the only person who hasn't noticed this dedication. When I've done internet searches about this sculpture, although it is mentioned on a number of sites, very few seem to be aware of the dedication.
The Perth Cultural Centre site mention briefly that the artist was a founding member of the Bauhaus School, and that there is a story that the man is said to be calling "peace".
The City of Perth's Art City flyer describes it like this:
Der Rufer was inspired when the artist was standing beside a man who called across a river to attract the ferryman on the other side. The figure in upright, forceful stance may symbolise the triumph of man’s spirit over oppression and adversity. The few swinging folds in the garment convey a sense of movement.
Neither of these descriptions mentions the dedication to torture victims.
There are at least two other versions of this sculpture. First, the caller appeared outside Radio Bremen in 1967. In this context, the calling man could be understood as a monument to democracy, representing freedom of speech; an important value for Marcks who lived through the Third Reich in Germany and was blacklisted by the Nazi regime.
In early 1989 another copy of Der Rufer was installed in West Berlin. The story goes that this calling man faced east, across the Berlin Wall, which was at that stage still in place. That statue is inscribed with a quote from Italian poet Francesco Petrarch which translates as, "I wander through the world, and cry 'Peace, Peace, Peace." (source: Fotoeins Fotopress.)
Perth’s Caller appeared in 1982, having been donated to the Gallery by CSR Limited. In the mid 1990s, some clients of ASSeTTS, the Association for Services to Torture and Trauma Survivors, expressed a sense of connection with the statue, with the idea of the man calling out. One of the Asetts counsellors decided to pursue this and, with the agreement of the Art Gallery of WA, on the first International Day of Victims of Torture, 26 June 1998, the statue was dedicated to both victims and survivors of torture. A tree was also planted, but was destroyed by vandals. Another tree was planted, but it died.

Questions:

Can this sculpture be understood to be a memorial if no one actually remembers it is?
Is there more to memorialising than engraving a plaque?
Are there still victims of torture among the people of Perth who use this walkway, who see The Caller and take comfort from him?