Xanthorrhoea

Gad-Ya-Gal / Grass Tree

Indigenous Engagement was integral to the curatorial framework for the Sydney Football Stadium’s public art commissions.  Input from the Metropolitan and La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Councils provided their perspectives on what properties they looked to find in public art and included an invitation for artists to respond to these.  Many things they wrote meaningfully shaped my proposal.  The first – that the overall aim of public art should be to exchange knowledge and share stories.  This led to a prolonged consultative conversation with Tess Allas that is discussed at greater length elsewhere.  Other points - “Sydney was originally called ‘Gadi’” a word connoting the grass tree species Xanthorrhoea. “‘Gal’ means people, so the Gadigal literally means the people of Gadi”.  Reading these informed my decision to choose the Xanthorrhoea as the primary motif for this image.  Like most people I have always loved the grass tree’s iconic shape.   

The ‘gadi’ was culturally consequent and had great utility for local Aboriginal communities.  These included making spear shafts from the stems and using the distinctive yellow resin as a super strong adhesive.  In the Linnean system, Xanthorrhoea comes from the Greek xanthos which roughly translates as ‘blonde or yellowish flow’ a clear reference to this resin.  Their hard pointed leaves form a hollow trunk, which when blackened by fire gives the ‘gadi’ its distinctive silhouette. An image of a cross section of a Xanthorrhoea trunk I found online strongly evoked the ovoid shape of the football stadium and further inspired me to center references to the Xanthorrhoea in this work.