Curatorial Framework

The curatorial framework and brief were created to ensure the public artwork would adequately reflect and incorporate the following ideas:

Sovereignty

Artists were encouraged to share and engage with their own Sovereignty and story, as well as the concept of Sovereign recognition through a wider lens that extends the current understanding of reconciliation with the aim of creating a shared vision for all.

Hilary Jackman’s sketches of the artwork for the proposal (opposite and pages 19–20).

Community Engagement

Active engagement with First Nations protocols and practices to create a public art work that engages and connects Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the surrounding RMIT community and embraces the idea of art as a meeting place.

Koorie Focus

In the development of a proposal for this Commission, artists were encouraged to intertwine and intersect stories of Sovereignty with that of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation, the Country on which the Commission is located within RMIT.

RMIT University’s senior Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff provided guidance in the process of this Commission. Points of reference for the concept development for this project were established through consultation with the Ngarara Willim Centre, Senior Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, and the Ngarara Willim Student Engagement Workshop:

• A national and international platform that celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander presence, art and talent at RMIT.

• In consideration of context the Commission should create an intersection of Indigenous culture, art and technology.

• Create a dialogue with past and present in acknowledgment of those who have come before us, that pave the way to a shared future.

• Embeds story and Sovereignty.

• A learning and research environment that promotes cultural education and interaction.

• Connect with place through story.

• Reflects on tradition and embraces contemporaneity.

• The nature of the Commission should be accessible to a wide range of audiences.

• Integrates ideas of growth, change and the possibility of a shared future in dialogue within the context of RMIT.