Silence is a large white billboard installed among the graves and pathways of Rookwood Cemetery, one of Australia’s oldest and most historic burial grounds. From a distance it appears entirely blank. Up close, the surface is covered in dates — the day protesters were attacked at a train station, the days universities were besieged by riot police, the specific moments of 2019 and 2020 that must not be forgotten. And across it all, repeated until it too became almost invisible: 「加油」, words of solidarity and encouragement that people could no longer safely say out loud.

I engraved the dates and words into the timber, painted over them, sanded them back, engraved again, painted again. I repeated this process so many times I lost count. The erasure and the insistence, happening by the same hands, over and over. That is what it felt like to watch from far away.

The cemetery is a place where voices have already been permanently silenced. To place this billboard here is to ask what the difference is between those who lie beneath the ground and those who are still living but forbidden to speak.

While rooted in a specific place and a specific moment, the work reaches beyond it. During the same period, people across Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other places were also taking to the streets, also being silenced, also finding quiet ways to say 「加油」to each other across the fear. The billboard holds all of them.

The billboard is white. The words are there.
You have to come close enough to read them.

Never forget. Never forgive.

. . .

Silence was created as a site-specific work for HIDDEN 2022, Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, September 2022. 

The process and making were subsequently presented as part of the Satellite exhibition at McGlade Gallery, Australian Catholic University, Sydney, October 2022.