On the 20 January 2017, at around 1:30 pm, a stolen Commodore was intentionally driven into pedestrians in the CBD of Melbourne. Six people were killed and at least thirty others wounded. The driver was charged with six counts of murder. The ripples from such a devastating act have deeply affected many lives.
The car doing burn outs at the intersection of Federation Square and the aftermath, are images for ever lodged in our collective memory. It is with deep sensitivity and awareness that I have conceptualised this work, as both marker of event and as symbol not to the act, but to its effect on our psyche. Rather than being positioned away from the city as a romanticised gesture of hope, the sling shot with the shell of the same model car is stretched towards the intersection of Swanston and Flinders Streets, representing the burnout as a liminal moment between innocence and transformation.
This relationship is also represented through the splitting and crumbling of a cement pillar, a building foundation of our city. Inverting the story of David’s sling, here there is no victory between opposing forces, but a collective memory that has shaped us all.
