Terri Brooks: Five Miles from the Sea

Curated by Geoff Tolchard

each participating Melbourne based artist has selected a location five miles from the sea...


Lemon Tree, very pretty…. 2011. Umbrella, sheets, tea towel, buttons and pins. H: 92, W: 86, D: 22 cm.

At the geographic point where my street meets the Merri Creek is believed by local Indigenous oral history to be the place where John Batman sealed the Dutigullar Treaty (items traded included knives, scissors, blankets and shirts). It is the only known attempt at a treaty between first Australians and European colonists.

Wurundjeri elder Ian Hunter… said his grandmother Martha Nevin told stories about his great-great-great-

grandfather Jerum-Jerum, one of three senior tribal elders at the treaty signing.

"Nanna pointed out the scar tree and said 'That's where it happened'".

At some stage it is believed a memorial was placed to mark the site.

What is left of the believed memorial plaque found under weeds, December, 2010. Photograph: Terri Brooks

Scar Tree, McLachlan St, Northcote. Image Reproduced from the Port Phillip Pioneers Group Inc. Website.

The Treaty Scar Tree (now fallen), December, 2010. Photograph: Terri Brooks

With kind assistance from local historian Alexander Romanov-Hughes.

N.B.: Title taken from the lyrics of ‘Lemon Tree’, 1962, Peter Paul and Mary.

…Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet

But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat…

FIVE MILES FROM THE SEA

April 19 - May 13

Level 17 Artspace

Victoria University

17/300 Flinders Street

Melbourne 3000

Five Miles from the Sea Website

Level 17 Artspace Website

Update

The tree has gone, April, 2011. Photograph: Terri Brooks

Julia Irwin, 'History overlooked and overgrown', Northcote Leader, May 4, 2011, News 9.

Julia Irwin, 'History overlooked and overgrown at key Aboriginal site'

Preston Leader, May 7, 2011, Lifestyle, Arts and Entertainment.

Ryan Paul, 'History overlooked and overgrown at key Aboriginal site'

Intertribal Times, Native and Aboriginal news stories from around the globe, May 6, 2011.

McLachlan Street site. Photograph: Adam Elwood.

Excerpt from Press Release

‘The artwork commenced as a replica scar tree but turned into a lemon tree during the construction process. My mother gave me material scraps to use for painting rags. Included was a frayed lemon print tea towel from the 1960s. I subconsciously began singing Peter Paul and Mary’s hit song, Lemon Tree, 1962. The chorus seemed appropriate to me, as a symbol of post settlement history… a bitter fruit. The tree even has gore wasp. I decided to make the tree in a likeness of my childhood Christmas tree. Made by my grandmother, the tree was an open umbrella stripped of its covering with the structural wires wrapped in cotton wool, bound with tinsel and adorned with hand crafted decorations. My grandmother enjoyed improvising, a legacy of living through the Great Depression as a young adult. Is it OK that the scar tree and memorial plaque are in this condition? What is the importance of Indigenous oral history?’ Terri Brooks.

Terri Brooks Website↓

Since 1989 Terri Brooks has held over twenty solo shows in Australia, New Zealand, Italy and the Netherlands as well as participating in numerous exhibitions including art fairs in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Poland and Hong Kong. Her work is in the Neubrandenburg Museum Collection, Germany, The Macquarie Group Collection, Westpac Bank, many other corporate and private collections around the world. For over ten years her work has been been incorporated into projects by leading interior designers and architects for exclusive and award winning interiors. In 2018 she completed two major commissions for the Westin, Perth and Sheraton Four Points, Sydney.

Line and Weight

'In her seminal 1979 essay ‘Grids’, Rosalind Krauss writes that ‘logically speaking, the grid extends, in all directions, to infinity’. The grid within an artwork is therefore ‘a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger fabric’. The paintings in Line and Weight convey both this sense of the infinite spatial grid and, through the building up of layers, the infinite and repetitious nature of time. Washed over, painted across, re-written, line by line.' Anna Dunhill 2019.

Over the Edge

`The neglected zones of urban existence – alley ways, awnings, walls, gutters and shutters – occupy a unique place within the history of painting. Perhaps inadvertently, artists have been depicting such insignificant elements as cracked window ledges or the dark recesses of architraves since the time of Giotto. Ubiquitous, utilitarian and often worn down, the marginal nature of such sites and the phenomenological questions they raise has dominated Terri Brooks practice for the past two decades and continues to inform her work today.' Phe Luxford, 2011.

Terri Brooks

Richmond Town Hall

update... The River and 5 Miles from the Sea exhibitions

Five Miles from the Sea : Level 17 Artspace