Wiradjuri-Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones’ new public art installation – untitled (maraong manaóuwi), which means emu footprint in Gadigal – required a team of a dozen people to cover 2500 sq metres of the Hyde Park barracks courtyard with stones, to symbolise shared black and white history.
In a design repeated on each square metre of the courtyard, workers have used stencils to embed white stones in the shape of what might be interpreted as an emu’s footprint – but which is also reminiscent of the colonial broad arrow printed on convict uniforms.
From 1819 until 1848, Hyde Park barracks housed some of Sydney’s convict labour force, their toil helping to displace and decimate the First Nations Gadigal people. When First Nations people resisted the British colonisers, former and serving convicts sometimes joined armed soldiers and free settlers in murderous retaliation.
