Burial ground

The 224 blown-glass forms in Burial ground represent each year of colonisation in Australia, from 1788 to 2012, the latter being the year the work was made. Each glass form resembles a desert yam or long yam (Ipomoea costata), an edible tuber gathered and eaten by Aboriginal people for millennia. Laid out on the transparent plinth as an elongated mound, collectively the forms resemble a human body.

Belonging to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples, Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera in South Australia, where a large weapons-testing site was established by the British and Australian governments in the middle of last century. Scarce has created a monument to the lives lost and to colonisation and conflict by using the ancient process of heating sand at exceedingly high temperatures, dipping a metal tube into the molten glass and then blowing air through the tube to create each form. This process is called ‘gathering’, the same word used in English to describe food-collecting practices, including the gathering of long yams by Aboriginal people on Country.