Albert Park
Yarning Circle
Landscape Architecture
Albert Park was a groundwater-fed lagoon, understood to have been curated for murnong (yam-daisy) production across areas far exceeding the park's original 600-hectare reservation.
From the arrival of european settlers in narm, as the colony expanded, First Peoples sought refuge in landscapes south of the Birrarung, before being systematically removed and displaced into missions out of the city. The lagoon was drained, the land reserved as a public park in 1864, and over time engineered into a formal lake edged in bluestone and filled by freshwater gravity-fed from Dights Falls. The surrounding landscape was shaped into an English-style gentlemans park and a place for recreation.
Today the park is perhaps best known for hosting the Formula 1 Grand Prix, though it holds many other uses, among them being the home of Victorian Institute of Sport (VIS), whose entry artwork by Katie Bugden speaks to this place as a central meeting point on Boon Wurrung/Bunurong Country.
The Yarning Circle project grows from this foundation. The design is oriented to tell the story of the Seven Sisters (Pleiades cluster), six of which are visible to the naked eye, which trace a path from northeast to northwest between November and March. The Seven Sisters' transit is deeply embedded in First Peoples seasonal knowledge, interconnected with the flowering and fruiting of plant species, the movement of the bogong moth, and a deep understanding of ecological and astronomical cycles that long predate Western science.
Reflecting the constellation onto this place is a way of bringing these cultural stories into urban landscapes, bringing forward this connection to a place in where the view of the stars in the night sky have been lost.
Also seen on: NITV (SBS)
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/opening-of-a-permanent-first-nations-yarning-circle-at-lakeside-stadium/6xkpfr0t3