"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

Forgotten Australians Memorial, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney

The Australian Federal Government provided $100,000 in funding for memorials to acknowledge the Forgotten Australians. Divided among the different states, this amounted to $16,666 each. The NSW State Government chose to place this plaque at the Twin Ponds site of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, turning the area into a quiet, reflective space where people can come to remember and acknowledge the experiences of people who spent their childhood in State care.
That is one interpretation. The other is that the memorial is hidden away, continuing a tradition of marginalising this aspect of Australia's history.
The memorial plaque reads:

For Forgotten Australians In this place, we remember the many thousands of NSW children who grew up in care in the decades leading up to the 1990s – in orphanages, in Children’s Homes and foster homes, in institutions. We remember the lonely, the frightened, the lost, the abused – those who never knew the joy of a loving family, who suffered too often at the hands of a system meant to provide for their safety and wellbeing. We rejoice in their courage and strength. This corner of the Gardens is dedicated to their memory.Erected by the Australian and NSW Governments19 September 2009

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'? 

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?

Edge of the Trees, Museum of Sydney

The Edge of the Trees is an art installation by Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence commissioned as part of the development of the Museum of Sydney, which opened in May 1995. Althought most often referred to as an art installation, it is also a memorial that calls to mind not only the local Eora peoples or the colonisers and convicts of Sydney's history, but the painful history of their relationship to each other.
The title of the artwork is taken from a passage of text by Rhys Jones (1985) describing the moment of first contact between Aboriginal people and colonisers:

...the discoverers struggling through the surf were met on the beaches by other people looking at them form the edges of the trees. Thus the same landscape perceived by the newcomers as alien, hostile or having no coherent form, was to the indigenous people their home, a familiar place, the inspiration of dreams.

The Museum of Sydney is a heritage site located where the State's original Government House once stood. Just on the other side of the entry path, visitors to the Museum of Sydney and view the excavated foundations of this early colonial building through a glass display case. It is designed to be passed through by visitors on their way into the museum, but is set off to the side, so this is optional.

For those people who do choose to enter, the installation offers a strangely overwhelming experience, considering that it is near a very busy road in the centre of Sydney. Visitors find themselves surrounded by posts, a little bit like tree trunks but made of a variety of different materials that reference the history of Sydney, including aged timber, sandstone, and industrial steel girders. Some of the posts are inscribed with words: Eora place names; the names of convicts; fragments of colonials text. Others contain materials that reference the kinds of keeping and categorising that might be found within a museum, but also refer to Eora culture: ash, sand, shells.
Alongside these visual and tactile elements are sound recordings in both Eora and English. The artwork does not tell the story of colonisation, and may be 'unreadable' for visitors who don't already know this history. But, much like any memorial, for someone who understands something of the story it creates a sense of complexity and sadness.
Edge of the Trees was created in the 1990s, during Australia's official decade of Reconciliation. But Janet Laurence, an Aboriginal artist, has said that both the process of creation and the artwork itself were more about negotiated co-existence than reconciliation.

Questions:

Where is the line between an artwork and a memorial, if the artwork is about memory?

Sydenham Lounge, commemorating lost community

Sydenham is an inner-Sydney suburb within the City of Marrickville. I stumbled upon the Sydenham Lounge while looking for a Stolen Generations memorial that is also located in the Sydenham Green Park. The 'Lounge' is a group of sculptures of over-sized everyday objects you might find in a suburban home—a giant teapot at the entry to the playground, a big read couch covered with a mosaic throw-rug, and a giant garage door, which after a while you realise is more like a giant fireplace, surrounded by ceramic tiles printed with enlarged newspaper cuttings which give the clues of the history of the place.

What I slowly realised, looking at the garage door and then again at a floor map and plaque near one of the park's entrances, is that this green space was just an ordinary surburban area, until the homes within it were forcibly requisitioned by the Commonwealth Government and demolished in the early 1990s because they were in the flight path for Sydney Airport's third runway.

The story reads much like the plot of 1990s Australian movie The Castle, but without the happy ending. Sydenham in the early 1990s was a small, tight-knit community with a mix of Australian-born and migrant residents. Those born overseas mainly came from Greece, Yugoslavia prior to partition, Turkey and Vietnam (Dictionary of Sydney). This mix of backgrounds is reflects on the mosaic 'rug' lying across the sofa, which has fragments of text in various languages, as well as a pattern of small aircraft, houses, faces and domestic items such as cooking utensils.

Although aircraft noise was an issue, many residents did not want leave their homes. The Sydenham Lounge artworks express a sense of loss people felt at having to leave their homes and community, as well as a sense of anger and injustice. This is expressed through the newpaper articles printed on the the tiles on either side of the 'fireplace', which not only tell the story of the airport development but also the struggle by Sydenham residents to keep their homes. 

The name 'Sydenham Lounge' plays ironically on the idea of an airport lounge, as well as the comfortable room inside a home.

The plaque at the park entrance is surrounded by a colourful mosaic map, showing the streets that made up the area now covered by Sydenhame Green. It reads:

Sydenham Green was established as an urban parkland in 1999. Formerly the residetial heart of Sydenham, the site became available through requisition of aircraft noise affected home. Original the hunting grounds of the Cadigal people of the Eora nation, the area became a farmland after colonisation before residential subdivision in the nineteenth century. This map illustrates the former neighbourhood plan of Sydenham. The design of this parkland was developed in close consultation with residents of the local area as a cultural and recreational landscape, with the aim of bringing new life to Sydenham.  

While Sydenham Lounge was created as a public art project rather than a formal memorial, the sense of loss expressed, despite the playful nature of the artworks, make it feel like a commemorative space.