For the 32nd Kaldor Public Art Project, Sydney-based Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones will present barrangal dyara (skin and bones), marking the first Kaldor Public Art Project presented with an Australian Aboriginal artist and one of the largest and most significant to-date.

This ambitious contemporary art project will transform Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden from 17 September until 3 October 2016. A vast sculptural installation across 20,000 square-metres of the garden incorporating a native kangaroo grassland and thousands of ceramic shields will blanket the site, which will be activated and enlivened by presentations of Aboriginal language, performances, talks, special events and workshops each day. A major component of the Royal Botanic Garden’s Bicentenary Celebrations, barrangal dyara (skin and bones) is presented free to the public, and enormous numbers of visitors to the site over 17 days are anticipated.

barrangal dyara (skin and bones) will recall the 19th century Garden Palace building where it originally stood in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden, between 1879 and 1882, before it devastatingly burnt to the ground, taking with it countless Aboriginal objects collected along the colonial frontier. The project is artist Jonathan Jones’s response to the immense loss felt throughout Australia due to the destruction of these culturally significant items. It represents an effort to commence a healing process and a celebration of the survival of the world’s oldest living culture despite this traumatic event.