welcome banners

Wollongong Council Project, 2010
Thirroul Community Centre and Library, Thirroul, NSW

galleries :: Public Art

The welcome banner project was one of four public art projects commissioned for the exterior of the Community Centre: a storyline pathway, seating, stormwater grates and welcome banners. The Centre was opened in May 2009.

statement

The four banner poles with their eight different faces were conceived to create a vibrant and colourful welcome for the Centre.

The banners were designed to acknowledge our relationship to the land and place; to acknowledge what land can contribute to being; to seek to restore a sense of custodianship for land and place.

Each banner celebrates a significant feature of the area… from the environment to community to history: rainforest, trees, escarpment, coal, mining, transport, railway, sea, surf, sand, meeting-place.

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continued…

A constant in the designs is the recognition of the closeness of and contrasts between the escarpment and the sea: the rainforest gives way to the sand of the beach, the deep shadows to bright sun and a deep green canopy to an azure blue sea, all held between the vertical escarpment and horizontal ocean.

Each of the banners include a cut out hand — this is an acknowledgement of the way Aboriginal people marked ownership of an area, as well as acknowledging visitors to an area.

This transparent hand is filled by the environment behind but is also an invitation to residents and visitors to place their hand in that place — taking part in an act of ownership of the place.

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I would like to thank:

my fellow artists: Celeste Cooke, Anna Pollack, Kim Williams
Sue Bessel for steering this project
Steve Drolc for his careful assistance in installing the banners
Monte Tortorella for printing

This was a Wollongong City Council Project launched in May 2009

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welcome banners

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