Located on the banks of the Birrarung – Yarra River, the artwork explores the conflicted meanings associated with Melbourne’s first European chimney, built by William Buckley for John Batman, and is informed by the counter-narratives that assemble around that form.
The artwork begins with an extraordinary historical detail. In 1836, the city’s first European chimney was built for John Batman – the author of the document known as Batman’s Treaty – by escaped convict William Buckley, who lived and assimilated with Wathaurung people for thirty-two years.
Chimney in store buries, and stores, the material needed to construct a free-standing brick chimney – 3520 bricks sourced from the region of the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station. An artist’s book that accompanies the artwork contains the texts for an array of plaques that would inscribe this conceptual chimney.
The artwork announces itself with tall native grasses, distinct from the surrounding lawns. It returns the bricks to the ground, and reconstructs a small hill, inverting the historical process that saw the destruction of Batman’s Hill, the site of Batman’s House, near what became the Spencer Street railway yards.
Chimney in store reflects on the complex meanings of the ‘treaty’ Batman claimed he signed with Wurundjeri people in 1835. Invalid under both Kulin and Crown law, the so-called treaty precipitated invasion and dispossession in Port Phillip, and the establishment of Melbourne. The artwork is conceived from the position of a non-Aboriginal artist. It attempts to think through the role of monuments and the collective responsibilities that issue from the histories and realities of invasion.
The artwork is accompanied by a single bronze plaque with the following text:
On 26 April 2021, 3,520 bricks are transported here from the upper reaches of the Birrarung/Yarra River, Wurundjeri Country. These bricks are stored here for a future monument: a free-standing chimney encased in thousands of words in plaques. This vertical form reprises this city’s first European chimney, built by William Buckley for John Batman. It is a monument to Batman’s treaty, the confected document
Batman claims he signs with Wurundjeri elders in 1835. These bricks here – towards an obelisk that is also a hearth for a treaty that triggers an invasion – become this store.
Tom Nicholson; Chimney in Store (Towards a monument to Batman’s Treaty), 2021
This project has had multiple iterations including ‘Buried chimney (Towards a monument to Batman’s Treaty)’ 2019, the central artwork in the artist’s major survey exhibition Tom Nicholson: Public Meeting, presented at ACCA from 6 April to 16 June 2019.
Chimney in store (Towards a monument to Batman’s Treaty is a sibling to another artwork:
untitled (seven monuments) 2013-19, created around Coranderrk Aboriginal Station by Tom Nicholson, senior Wurundjeri elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, and Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, all significant advisors in the development of
Chimney in store.
This project is also supported by
TarraWarra Museum of Art.
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