Walking within the RMIT courtyard concentrates the mind. For a ceramic student I wanted to incorporate my ceramic work into the Art and the Environment courtyard project.
The RMIT courtyard encompasses sections of the old Melbourne Gaol. After taking lots of photographs I wondered if i would have the inspiration to undertake my project. It worked because I kept coming back to a tree with a the plaque near it describing four hanged prisoners burial site close to the tree. The gaol's hospital wall was also very close to the tree and the graves. So coming from a health background I wanted to use bandages in my project.
The tree is for the tree of life. Not only have I included the bandaged tree but also two ceramic trees which I built last year. I like them because thy have a figurative quality about them.
The plaque incorporates the hanged prisoners Budd, Oldring, Ross and Murray and gives a reality to their death.
The three bandaged branches also have a figerative quality, the arms and trunks of the hanged men.Bandages also talk about an altered physical and psychological state - the men's violet deaths.
Clay comes from the earth and the bandages when dipped into a porcelain clay slip and fired became the men's bones lying under the tree. The bandaged altered by a ceramic/clay process return the men to the earth.
Life (tree), life and change (bandages), death (plaque), dissolving into the earth (clay bones made from the bandages).
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