The Vanquished

‘A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.’ – Lucy Lippard

This project – a contemplation on the connection of place and time – flowed from research on the area where Chris lives. The influx of European settlers and livestock along the Maribyrnong River in 1835 vastly undermined the indigenous way of life. Merely eleven years later, facing a rapidly declining population due to starvation and disease, the Wurundjeri Willam people deserted the area.

Chris has combined early settler maps of the area with ink washes of historic conquerors, which are then pasted onto a miniature house. This generic house, symbolic of our desire for security and belonging – something conqueror and conquered have in common – was placed and photographed at various locations along the Maribyrnong, a small testimony to the continuous cycle of abrupt upending of one civilisation/culture by another.

Lippard, Lucy. 1997. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Books.