03 November, 2005

ANU sculpture collection



Djon MUNDINE
Born Graftom 1951
in collaboration with

Fiona FOLEY
Born Maryborough 1964

Ngaraka: Shrine for the Lost Koori 2001

Installation of kangaroo bones, paper bark, steel tubing

Gift of the artists 2001

(Grounds of Humanities Research Centre, Old Canberra House)

Mundine is an artist, an independent curator and arts writer. Foley studied at Sydney College of the Arts, East Sdney Technical College and in London. Won Lloyd Rees Award for Outstanding Urban Design in 1995.

Across Australia there has been a funeral and post funeral practice carried out by Aborginal people of wrapping the deceased in paperbark and placing the body on a fork stick platform.

Since the arrival of Europeans may human bones have been removed, so the artists constructed this shrine for these "unknown lost Kooris". Kangaroo bones were used because in Koori culture kangaroos are metaphors for humans. No human remains have been used in this shrine. Traditional ceremonies accompanied the installation and indigenous visitors are encouraged to welcome the dead home by addressing them in their own languages.

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