Nganga toornung-nge dharraga Bunjil [looking down from the wings of Bunjil] (2022) commissioned for ACCA’s Who’s Afraid of Public Space? program is now open at the Abbotsford Convent in Naarm.

Image: Andrew Curtis

Keg de Souza
Nganga toornung-nge dharraga Bunjil 
[Looking down from the wings of Bunjil] 2021–22
powder coated steel, net, native plants
600 cm (diameter)
Courtesy the artist

Commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, 2021-22
Co-presented by Abbotsford Convent and ACCA, as part of ACCA’s long-term research project and exhibition Who’s Afraid of Public Space? 2021-22

Offsite
Abbotsford Convent
1 St Helliers Street, Abbotsford VIC 3067

Keg de Souza is an artist of Goan ancestry who lives and works on unceded Gadigal land in Sydney. Architecturally trained, Keg de Souza’s practice activates social and spatial environments, making reference to her lived experiences of squatting and organising with projects that use temporary architecture, radical pedagogy and food politics. De Souza also draws on her personal experiences of colonialism, which informs her richly layered practice.

Commissioned for the Providence Lawn atAbbotsford Convent, Nganga toornung-nge dharraga Bunjil takes the form of a garden and play equipment. It is designed as ‘a grassland learning garden’, and a sculpture intended for climbing, play and relaxation for visitors of all ages. As a garden, Nganga toornung-nge dharraga Bunjil reflects de Souza’s interests in practices of re-wilding colonised landscapes and the resistance of nature to taming and control. Working with local advisers and suppliers, the garden is populated with grasses and aromatic flowers that are endemic to this area, where, ‘In Victoria’, as de Souza notes, ‘99.3% of native grassland areas have disappeared’.*

The sculpture offers an aerial perspective from which to view native garden. The title of the work, Nganga toornung-nge dharraga Bunjil, is a Wurundjeri phrase roughly translated as ‘looking down from the wings of Bunjil’. The name was generously offered during de Souza’s consultations and conversations with Wurundjeri Elders and the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation. The artist extends her thanks Uncle Dave Wandin, Aunty Gail Smith, Charley Woolmore, Zena Cumpston and Katherine Horsfall for advising on this project.

* Noted from a conversation with Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston, researcher and author of the ‘Indigenous plant use’ booklet exploring the cultural, nutritional, technological and medicinal use of indigenous plants.

Plants in the garden:

Enchylaena tomentosa (Ruby Saltbush)
Disphyma crassifolium (Hot Stuff / Pig Face)
Calocephalus citreus (Lemon Beauty)
Microlaena stipoides (Weeping Grass)
Brachyscome multifida (Cut Leaf Daisy)
Leptorhynchos tenuifolius (Wiry Buttons)
Wahlenbergia capillaris (Blue Bell)
Rytidosperma racemosum (Wallaby Grass)
Chrysocephalum apiculatum (Common Everlasting)
Poa sieberiana (Grey Tussok Grass)
Themeda triandra (Kangaroo Grass)
Austrostipa elegantissima (Feather Grass)
Rytidosperma caespitosum (Common Wallaby Grass)
Poa labilliardieri – Yan Yean (Tall Tussok Grass)