MAGANDJIN VETERAN - ART PRINT

ABOUT MAGANDJIN VETERAN

Created by local artist Sam Harrison, Magandjin Veteran is an answer to a call to action by Aunty Kerry Charlton, to engage with Traditional Owners to activate and highlight the cultural significance of Barrambin (Victoria Park).

Barrambin is nestled between the Royal Brisbane Hospital, Route 77 – Enoggera Road and the M5. One of the last green spaces providing clean air, natural temperature control and vital parklands to the greater North Brisbane area. Low lying rolling hills once looked over the river and wetlands which are now roads and concrete walls. A meeting point and campgrounds for Mob, intersecting national pathways that connect the entire east coast, the parklands have an irreplaceable history and memory of countless gatherings and ceremony.  

Places such as these are essential for the Reconciliation process. It gives members of communities, who have experienced removal, Country to return to. Country being the layering of time, memory, relationships, knowledge, lore and law in a single location, linking us back to and giving clarity to our ancestral identities. 

Through a portrait of this veteran tree, ‘Henry’, which stands as one of the last living ties to precolonial ‘Australia’, we access a larger conversation of what is at stake when resisting continued colonial imperialism through the development of the Olympic Games stadium in this parkland. 

*Please note, this fundraiser is unrelated to Save Victoria Park’s GoFundMe fundraiser. For more details and to purchase this piece visit Sam Harrison’s website: https://samharrison.art/products/veteran-tree-print-vic-park-ymac-fundraiser?variant=53946185646293