Know Your Park Lands Art - Lie of the Land
by Chelsea McLean
Your Adelaide Park Lands are home to a variety of artistic works.
This article is the first in a series, Know Your Park Lands Art, that will introduce you to various creative works in your Park Lands.
This symbolic piece Lie of the Land invites you to travel back in time to explore the interwoven histories of this country.
Lie of the Land is an assortment of 25 dome-like / beehive shaped stone structures.
Lie of the Land in G.S. Kingston Park / Wirrarninthi (Park 23). Pic: Experience Adelaide
They are located on both sides of Sir Donald Bradman Drive. Twelve of them are on the northern side of the road, in Ellis Park / Tampawardlii (Park 24). The other thirteen are on the southern side of the road, in G.S. Kingston Park / Wirrarninthi (Park 23).
Our Trail Guides for Park 23 and Park 24 each include a stop at the respective installations.
The artwork, designed by Aleks Danko and Jude Walton, was opened in 2004 by State Government Minister John Hill. The display invokes Aboriginal “wurleys” or huts as seen in early European drawings.
These ‘universal symbols of home’ were made with Kanmantoo stone sourced from an Adelaide Hills quarry in Kanmantoo, granitised sand, and black mallee box.
Each sculpture is the same but different; they are hand-made.
Danko and Walton told Experience Adelaide that “they celebrate the diverse people, languages and cultures that have shaped Australian society, and our natural and built form, while acknowledging the right of everyone to a place called home.”
Danko and Walton explain that the sculptures “mark indigenous guardianship of the land, saying what has been unsaid by admitting to the lie of terra nullius ‘territory of no-one.’”
This work invites you to reflect on the cultural traditions and histories that have shaped our land, exploring layers of meaning behind the surface of these domes.
The artwork was inspired by an 1858 drawing in the Art Gallery of South Australia, which shows Indigenous Australians camping in similar structures in the West Park Land area at the time of European settlement.
“Winter encampment in Wurlies of division of the Tribes from Lake Bonney and Lake Victoria in the Parklands near Adelaide” by European colonial artist Eugene von Guerard (1858).
The area around the sculptures has been planted with native trees and kangaroo grasses as part of the display.
The Kaurna name of Park 23, Wirrarninthi (‘to become wirra’) means to ‘become transformed into a green, forested area.’
Aboriginal people continue to gather in Wirrarninthi (Park 23). Lie of the Land recognises their heritage and attachment to the area.
Lie of the Land was produced as part of the Western Gateway Public Art Project, funded in 2004 by what was then known as the Department for Transport, Urban Planning and the Arts (DTUPA).
For more articles in our “Know Your Park Lands Art” series, head here: https://www.adelaide-parklands.asn.au/know-your-park-lands-art.