2018. Morning Star
Sir John Monash Centre
Our tapestry, Morning Star (2017-18) is installed at the centre of the grand entry space of the landmark memorial to WW1, the Sir John Monash Centre. Our tapestry at the SJM Centre aims to evoke the experience of arrival at a war, and in particular of Australians arriving at the Western Front. With them on their arrival were their memories of Australia and their departure from home.Â
These are the subjects of the tapestry. Rather than duplicate the powerful archaeology and imagery of war on display within the museum displays, this tapestry evokes the soldiers’ pathway from home to the Front, and emphasizes the incongruity between the Australia that they imagined as they journeyed further and further towards the Front and the places that they now passed through. Just as the Centre provides both Australian and non-Australian visitors with an understanding of the impact of Australia’s involvement on the Western Front through an engagement with the places in which the Australians fought and the experiences of those who were there, so this tapestry communicates to non-Australians and to Australian pilgrims alike an understanding of the places for which the Australians fought and the imaginary spaces that they carried with them. We know this is the case: Charles Green’s grandfather was one of those WW1 AIF Western Front soldiers, badly wounded and invalided on these precise battlefields, and we have his letters home. It therefore seemed to us that it is absolutely essential, first, to evoke a mental place of Australian freedom and clear light; and, second, to evoke the sea-borne passage towards the soldiers’ arrival at the Front. The work of the tapestry is to emphasise a disjunction between the terrible experiences that the Centre describes rather than repeat them. It seems to us very important to present images such as soldiers might have carried in their hearts and imaginations as they arrived at Villers-Bretonneux and the Western Front. If the Centre had been located in Australia, we would have chosen the reverse, to evoke the Front.