The Big Eel Trap

It is like all those roadside attractions the Big Pineapple, the Big Banana, the Big Marino. The big eel trap… and they’re alright, but this is much better. For this is also art and culture, and this is on St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, out in front of the state’s leading cultural institution. Luk bagurrk gunga (eel women catch) is by Kim Wandin (Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung), a Wurundjeri elder of the Woiwurrung language group who learnt basket making from her grandmother.  

St. Kilda Road was intended to be an avenue of heroes, lined with memorials and statues of men. But before that, before colonisation it was part of the migratory paths of iuk (the short-finned eel), and Wurundjeri women would make traps for them.

Co-commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the City of Melbourne, Luk bagurrk gunga will become part of the collection of the City of Melbourne. I hope the 8m long, site-specific sculpture remains along St Kilda Road for as long as all those other memorials. It is a symbol of the continuing presence of Wurundjeri culture on land taken and never ceded.

It is also the best sculpture in my long memory to grace the moat of the NGV. My second place would go to Geoffrey Bartlett’s Messenger. My reasons why Luk bagurrk gunga is my first choice are: it is about local water, and it is sitting in water (unlike Messenger or any of the other sculptures that have been displayed there), it has a complex post-colonial meaning (unlike Messenger), and it is (like Messenger), abstract and beautiful. For basket making, weaving, and knitting, create the abstract art of the patterns.

Geoffrey Bartlett, “Messenger” , 1983, steel

After praising it, I’m looking for possible criticism of a work. Possibilities run through my mind (Put your hand down, Sigmund Freud, yes, we can all see it’s not another phallic erection). Maybe it could have been made of other materials. As a bronze sculpture, one of Melbourne’s sculpture foundries will have had a hand in its creation and take their share of the commission for the fabrication and installation. But if an Indigenous artist wants to use bronze with all its cultural glory, its permanence and artistic tradition, and its baggage, that’s their decision.

Luk bagurrk gunga makes me think, where can I get some unadon (grilled eel rice bowl) for lunch?