For someone who has rarely been to Brunswick, I found myself back there again for the third time in November. This time we were there for the ‘Marking Time‘ art project, produced by Jessie Stanley, artist-in-residence as part of the MoreArts program of the Moreland City Council. Based in Moreland Railway Station waiting room, the project runs between October 23 and December 19 and involves a number of site-specific works and events (see the project’s Facebook page for more information). Today was a Timewalk – the first of two- that went from Jewell Station to Gilpin Park.
It would probably be more correct to think of this walk as a performance rather than a historical walk as such (partial as I am to historic walks). Ms Stanley read from a carefully and quite beautifully written script, starting off with a contemplation on the nature of ‘place’ and ending, some 45 minutes later and about 1/2 kilometre away, with an enacted description of deep time. She asked that we undertake the walk in silence, focussing on the bricks that surrounded us, with any interaction only at the end. I’m not really sure that this stricture was necessary, although I suppose that it enabled her to control the event as an integrated performance. Her presentation concentrated on the brickworks of the area in particular, and not a generalized history of Brunswick that might have been given, for example, by a member of Brunswick Community History Group. Instead, her focus was on the brickworks, most particularly Hoffman’s Brickworks, and the dominance of clay and bricks on the economic and social fabric of Phillipstown (the earlier name for Brunswick). Certainly, walking around the post2000 redevelopment of the former Hoffman’s Brickworks site, you get a sense of the dominance of the chimneys and sirens of a large brick factory.
The walk ended at Gilpin Park, built on the site of one of the former quarries that provided the clay for the brickworks. It was here that she returned to her reflections on deep time, and the wafer-thin segment of white settler time in what we know now as Brunswick. Somehow the newness of the park with its adolescent-aged gum tree plantings captured this well.
There is a second walk, covering different places but similar themes, on Saturday 10th December, starting from Clifton Park at 11.00 a.m. It is free, but you need to book through post@jessiestanley.com (0419 441 195)
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 