Landing Place
8 channel audio, 8 speakers, 2009 (ongoing)
Commissioned for the Burrawang Walk hillside at Kamay Botany Bay National Park at Kurnell, Sydney.
Since the arrival of Captain Cook in 1770, Kamay Botany Bay has become a site of British arrival and dispossession of Australian Aboriginal culture. Located one hour south of Sydney, the waterfront has long been dotted with silent monuments to Captain Cook and botanists Banks and Solander.
The sound installation, Landing Place, was created to provide a permanent marker of Aboriginal culture at the site of Captain Cook's landing. The soundscape emerges from the landscape along the Burrawang Walk, from the top of the dune to the creek below.
Leber and Chesworth worked with adults and children from the La Perouse Aboriginal community in Sydney, with traditional singing led by key local Aboriginal Glen Timbery. The soundscape is alive with voices and singing, and the activities of tool-making, Bundi-carving, clapsticks-making and shellwork.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to the participants from the La Perouse Aboriginal community and beyond, including children from Matraville Soldiers Settlement Primary School and La Perouse Public School, La Perouse Aboriginal elders, Glen Timbery, Dean Kelly, Calita Murray, Esme Russell, Marilyn Russell, Sharon Williams.
The work is part of a site redevelopment project commissioned by New South Wales Government with a design team led by Freeman Ryan Design.
