Eora by Jake Nash

Eora by Jake Nash

This amazing artwork is Eora by Jake Nash, which is immediately outside the National Office of The Smith Family in Sydney (on the corner of Kent Street and Market Street). 

The Eora are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales. Eora is the name given by the earliest European settlers to a group of Aboriginal people belonging to the clans along the coastal area of what is now known as the Sydney basin in New South Wales, Australia. The Eora share a language with the Darung people, whose traditional lands lie further inland, to the west of the Eora.

2 Market Street

Jake writes:

"My mother’s Country is Daly River, west of Darwin, and while I am not from Sydney and it is not my ancestral land, for the last twenty years I have lived, worked and created here and it has now become my home and my family’s home.

"Eora sits at the crossroads of the city, a point of intersection between the past, present and future, and is surrounded by institutions that have shaped and governed our land: the Law Courts, the Church, as well as the Hyde Park Barracks. These buildings, both now and in the past, symbolise white governance in this city and represent the very beginnings and formalisation of colonisation.

St James Church from Hyde Park Barracks

"These historical and site-driven factors are what underpin Eora, as the artwork makes a statement about resilience, cultural strength and the everlasting relationship between people and place and reminds us all that the land on which this artwork and these buildings stand, always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

"Eora is a contemporary, timeless symbol and can be passed down through the generations into the future. It is a message stick, within a city which has many cultural narratives running across its surfaces, that describe who we are as a contemporary, multi-cultural people with a shared history and shared future.”

I think it is an outstanding artwork that welcomes interaction and reflection from the design incorporated into the sandstone wall, which we are encouraged to observe, to the outline reflected in the ground on which we walk. I love that this is outside the head office of the place where I work.