Who goes here?

Who goes here? by Fiona Hall, one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, will launch at the Hyde Park Barracks in April. Presented as part of Sydney Living Museums’ ‘Reflections on identity’ theme for 2021, the installation prompts reflections on how history and place shape our sense of belonging and identity, who makes up that history and how we as individuals reflect on that past today.

Fiona Hall was inspired by the stories and identities of the many people who lived and worked at the Hyde Park Barracks from 1819 to 1887: convicts, immigrants and asylum inmates and the officials who controlled their lives. Her new installation, commissioned by Sydney Living Museums, will fill the courtyard of this UNESCO World Heritage-listed site and feature a fascinating selection of these past residents and workers. A painted wooden signpost will represent each person, profiling their story and the distance travelled from ‘home’. Each post in this ‘forest of signs’ becomes a totem for an individual, and for his or her story, which anchors them to this place, and which now can be retold.