Anti-Memorial for Heroin Overdose Victims

Full description

RESEARCH BACKGROUND
This Anti-Memorial was a temporary public event undertaken as part of the Melbourne Festival. It comprised three types of objects located in St Kilda: red text stencilled on the pavement taken from personal statements about the victims; planter boxes filled with poppies and illuminated resin plaques attached to the planters, incorporating personal items of the victims.
The project sought to raise social consciousness and political awareness regarding typically unquestioned decisions of appropriate memorialisation in public spaces. It highlighted the possible meanings of conventional symbols and iconic landscapes and attempted to subvert prevailing sentiments.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
Anti-Memorial questioned the nature and purpose of memorials, attempting to realise one as a physical catalyst for social change. The temporal nature of the project challenged traditional pre-conceptions regarding the permanence of memorial objects. Like many traditional memorials, it was deeply connected with the landscape but in a specific and intimate way that forced people to confront a social problem (heroin use) affecting their own locality.
The work provoked a variety of reactions, from supportive to scathing, throughout its duration. Unexpectedly, the public interacted heavily with the sites. During the three-week installation period, people left notes, cards, flowers, and wrote messages in chalk on the footpaths adjacent to the work. Often people would not walk on the stencilled text, out of respect for the victims.

RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
The project was exhibited in 2008 in the Shanghai Art and Architecture Exhibition. It was won in a competitive selection process for the Melbourne Festival and received the Project Award for Landscape Art from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects in 2002.