Memorials to a murderer

To make it clear about the moral character of John Batman, his neighbour, the colonial landscape painter John Glover, described him as “a rogue, thief, cheat and liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I have ever known”. Even Batman’s wife did not stand by the evil, syphilitic, alcoholic man who claimed to have bought the land where Melbourne now stands for a few axes and bags of flour.

John Batman Memorial at Fawkner Cemetery

So how many statues and memorials does Melbourne need to this awful man? How many places, parks and railway stations need to be named after him? Melbourne had over half a dozen, but fortunately, that number has been lowered. A statue of Batman on Collins Street was removed for construction purposes in 2016. Batman Park in Northcote has been renamed Gumbri Park, but there is still a Batman Park in the CBD. The Australian Electoral Commission renamed the inner-city federal seat of Batman in honour of Indigenous rights campaigner William Cooper. Batman train station and two obelisks, one at Fawkner Cemetery and another at Queen Victoria Market, remains.

In 2020 I made a formal complaint about having a memorial to a genocidal criminal in the City of Melbourne. I was informed that: “it is currently being considered in the context of the Queen Victoria Market site. The memorial is an existing feature of the space, and its future will be considered as part of the overall design process. Close consultation with the relevant Traditional Owner groups and descendants of the Batman family is currently being undertaken.” The ongoing consultations have gone nowhere. The inadequate explanation of Batman on the memorial is barely an acknowledgement. The City of Melbourne should return this lump of stone to an Indigenous artist Mandy Nicholson, who carves impressive petroglyphs. 

Thanks to Jo Waite for pointing out the historic photograph of the Batman memorial at Fawkner Cemetery. Melbourne City Councillors in top hats and frock coats standing next to a new obelisk. I rode my bicycle north along the Upfield railway line to see for myself. I found it easily enough, it stands several metres tall in the flat lawn cemetery. It is amongst the old gravestones removed from the old Melbourne cemetery to make way for the Melbourne market (“money before decency” is the Australian motto). The isolated memorial in the lawn cemetery is the most recent of memorials to Batman. It was constructed in 1922, about the same time as many of the Confederate monuments in the USA. A time of international uncertainty, where monuments were designed to cement traditional views in the civic infrastructure.

As few cars were around and the weather was pleasant, I decided to bicycle back on a different route. It was then that I became lost in the vast cemetery, and some panic set in. Why was I putting in this energy to trace the surface archeology of Australian colonialism? Speaking ill of the dead in a place created to commemorate them. Eventually, I found another exit from the graveyard. Like the cemetery map, the network of institutional racism needs to be recognised from the colonial origins to the present. As the Batman memorial at Queen Victoria Market says circumspice, Latin meaning “You must look around”.

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Indigenous Culture on the streets

On Friday 5 July I met the NAIDOC Week march as I was walking to Fitzroy. The march was coming the opposite way walking from Fitzroy to Federation Square. I felt inspired by the march – I want a treaty and truth (like South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission). Australia needs a treaty with its Indigenous population; Australia is the only Commonwealth country not to have a treaty with its indigenous people.

I considered my options joining the march or continuing my walk into Fitzroy. I decided to continue on looking at public art, street art and art exhibitions but with a focus on indigenous history. My methodology for these walks is asystematic, random, and often without preconceived objectives. This is because I want to take unfamiliar routes and find new things.

This is No Fantasy, the Dianne Tanzer and Nicola Stien’s gallery on Gertrude Street was showing Vincent Namatjira’s exhibition Coming To America. Vincent is a Western Arrernte man from Ntaria (Hermannsburg) and the grandson of the famous artist, Albert Namatjira. It was Vincent Namatjira’s fifth solo presentation at this prominent Melbourne commercial gallery. Black dots beside the works showed that every painting had sold.

Vincent Namatjira’s crude but effective style has an absurd sense of humour. The exhibition has a series of paintings depicting his trip to America, including his time in Hollywood, the White House and relaxing on beach chair at the Miami Beach Art Basel. On one wall was a grid of black and white portraits of alternating black and white people. Namatjira seems to be saying: why so serious when this is fun?

Gertrude Street was named after the daughter of Captain Brunswick Smythe who acquired the land in 1839 in colonial exploitation; in spite of it colonial origins Gertrude Street has many reminders of Melbourne’s Indigenous history. There are several plaques by the City of Yarra Aboriginal Cultural Signage Reference Group and the Aboriginal Advisory Group: The Koori Club, the Aboriginal Housing Board and the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. (As well as public art I am now looking at plaques — how dull can I get?).

At the corner of Lt. Napier Street, there is the recent ‘Sovereignty’ mural by Robert Young, Heesco and Makatron. They are all Melbourne-based artists but only Young is a Gunnai/Gunditjmarra/Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri man – Heesco is from Mongolia and Makatron is probably from outer space, or Adelaide.

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A bit further along Gertrude Street, at the corner of Gertrude and George Streets stand three “Delkuk Spirits”, 2002, by Kelly Koumalatsos, a Wergaia/Wamba Wamba woman from the northwest of Victoria.  The yarn bombed dress on one of thin bronze figures has been there for years, it implies that it a woman and makes the group more inclusive.

Kelly Koumalatsos, Delkuk Spirits, 2002, bronze

On the same corner is Maysar, the Melbourne Youth Sport and Recreation Co-Operative with glass design in the windows and glass doors by Mandy Nicholson, a member of the Wurundjeri-willam clan of the Kulin Nation. Nicholson’s work is familiar to me as she designed Gayip, the stainless steal spiral headed figure with wings perched on a rock on the South bank and the petroglyphs at Birrarung Wilam.

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I turned left onto to Smith Street, named after Melbourne’s Mayor Smith 1855-64 a publican turned politician. At first there was much less reminders of Indigenous history on Smith Street, just on plaque for the Victorian Aboriginal Co-operative Limited at 108 Smith Street, one guy in an Aboriginal flag t-shirt getting lunch and a small flag painted on a house in one of the streets off Smith.

That was until I reached the corner of Stanley and Smith Street where the Glenn Romanis has designed the combination of a micro-park, seating, public art and a map. Glenn Romanis is from the Wurundjeri/woi wurrung and Boonwerrung people of the Kulin Nation, and like Nicholson, Romanis’s public work was familiar from his carving at Birrarung Wilam. The sites are mapped in fossilised wood with granite streets cutting across the sedimentary rock that flows like rivers. Carved in the rock “Wominjeka Wurundjeri Bik” (Welcome to Wurundjeri Country). It was a good place to continue an exploration of Indigenous culture in Melbourne.

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More of Melbourne’s Public Sculptures

More of Melbourne’s public sculptures that aren’t in Sculptures of Melbourne. My book was never intended to be a catalogue of Melbourne’s sculpture. In writing a history I could not include every example. The Melbourne City Council has 100 sculptures and 80 monuments, not including privately owned sculptures on public display, nor those owned by institutions like the Arts Centre or Melbourne University and RMIT. Then there are all the sculptures in the suburbs of greater Melbourne. So here are a few more that aren’t in my book, and haven’t yet been mentioned in this blog.

Nadim Karam, The Travellers, 2005-6

A large prominent series of sculpture that I didn’t mention are The Travellers, 2005-6 by the multidisciplinary artist and architect, Nadim Karam. Karam has made similar sculptures for cities around the world, so he was a safe choice for a major commission.

The steel figures parade across the Sandridge bridge, some with little wind propellers turning. The figures are meant to represent migration to Australia. On the south bank of the Yarra is Gayip, the stainless steal spiral headed figure with wings perched on a rock on the South bank, represents both the indigenous Aboriginal population and a gathering point for the travellers. It is dubious that any of this well intended meaning is obvious to the thousands of people who see it every day.

The Gayip figure was designed by Karam in collaboration with Mandy Nicholson, a member of the Wurundjeri-willam clan of the Kulin Nation. Nicholson, an RMIT graduate also designed the petroglyphs at Birrarung Wilam and Kirrip Wurrung Biik.

Konstantin Dimopoulos, Red Centre, 2006

Federation Square is often used for temporary sculpture exhibitions and because of all the temporary events there is only one permanent sculpture at Federation Square. Like a tussock of grass the red coated steel stems of Konstantin Dimopoulos Red Centre 2006, move, rattle and sways. Red Centre takes some of Len Lye, the master of kinetic sculptures ideas and expands them into a post minimalist sculpture.

Since creating Red Centre the Egypt-born and Melbourne-based sculpture artist, Dimopoulos has created a ”social art action” with blue trees painted with environmentally safe, ultramarine blue pigment to raise awareness of deforestation. This series started in 2005 with Sacred Grove – The Blue Forest commissioned by the City of Melbourne. It continued in cities in New Zealand, Canada and the USA. From blue trees and red poles Dimopoulos continues to work with colours and social issues with Black Parthenon 2009 and The Purple Rain 2015.

Pauline Fraser, Wind Contrivance, 1995

At the Victoria Market there is Pauline Fraser’s Wind Contrivance, 1995. With the wheel it almost looks industrial were it not for the scattering of bronze pumpkin, aboriginal fish trap and other items. The mix of materials, stone, bronze and wood, further confuses the meaning. The meaning of the sculpture, like its materials and parts are scattered. It was acquired when the market was refurbished as part of the percent for the arts. It is located in an odd position half way up Therry Street. Children climb on it and its low plinth is often used as a seat by people eating take-away food from the market.

The sculptor, Fraser has a series of bronze sculptures with a clearer meaning marking the entrance to the Altona Pier. On six corten steel plinths is a bronze leatherjacket fish,  a cuttlefish, a sea horse, a shell and a large crab. “Seaborn” 2005 makes reference to the diversity of marine life in Port Philip Bay.