“Talking Our Way Home” is an art installation in and on the banks of the River Torrens in Elder Park/Tarndanya Womma, created by Adelaide artist Shaun Kirby. Installed in 2005, it comprises of glass structures in the shape of paper boats, with the images of letters written by early migrants to Australia, ‘floating’ just off the shore.
Description of the Artwork
Shaun Kirby is a prominent Adelaide artist, awarded the prestigious Samstag Scholarship in 1998. He has been described as a painter, sculptor and bricoleur alike. In 2002, the Adelaide City Council requested tenders for a new work of public art, and Kirby’s vision was the winning submission.
The work itself consists of two elements. The more visually striking component is the collection of glass boats floating on the Torrens. The text covering these boats come from handwritten letters and diaries written by recently-arrived migrants to Australia, highlighting the exciting but also potentially traumatic experiences of those who have been uprooted from their own culture and transplanted into a new Australian life. Giving context to the meaning of these boats is the plaque alongside them, seemingly sliding from the shore of the river into the water. Kirby has said that he is fascinated by ‘in-betweenness’; the challenging experience of new Australians being caught between their old and new lives is represented by the plaque being literally in-between the land and the water. Using an English-language quote by renowned Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, coupled with a Kaurna-language response, these words address themes of dispossession and the role of language in the construction of personal and cultural identity.
The finished work was unveiled on 8 July 2005. At this ceremony, Lord Mayor Michael Harbison proclaimed that “the glass boats were a wonderful addition to Adelaide City Council’s inspirational public art program”. Lit up at night, these boats have become a popular attraction.
Themes of “Talking Our Way Home”
The main theme of “Talking Our Way Home”, evidenced even within its very name, is the idea of displacement from one’s own culture, and the role of language in fostering identity. Kirby highlights both the alienation of foreign migrants arriving in Adelaide, as well as the sense of dispossession felt by the Indigenous Australians whose lands were taken and culture suppressed.
The boats themselves harbour the work’s main thoughts on the experiences of migrants, represented by the choice of migrant letters and journals. Kirby himself drew from personal experience, as he had migrated to Adelaide by boat as a child in the 1960s. In 2005, he reminisced about the time he and his family spent in the Elder Park Migrant Hostel, which was located on the site of the current Festival Centre and a very short distance from the location of his artwork. The texts utilised by Kirby are the journals and letters of 19th and 20th century migrants, which are understood as a literal and metaphorical link between their old homes and the new identity that they were required to form. The content of these handwritten documents is not necessarily uplifting: included are tales of scarily creaking boats, of men being washed overboard to their deaths, and even a sense of overwhelming disappointment at the comparative lack of development compared to European cities.
Kirby did not mean for this work to be depressing, however, and instead highlights the ambiguity of these experiences. He referred to the boats as “sweet but lonely little presences out there”. The Adelaide City Council summarised the intricate way in which Kirby addressed his themes, claiming that “[t]he work engages with significant social and cultural issues in a poetic and playful way, without being an overbearing or pedantic presence in the landscape”.
While these boats clearly represent the experiences of migrants to Australia, Kirby uses the text of the plaque to address the plight of Indigenous Australians whose land was dispossessed and culture and language suppressed. The main English-language part of this text is a quote from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. This represents how important the use of language is to the construction of self-identity, but it also implies something of a static worldview that allows for ready dispossession of culture through the suppression of language. Following this quote, however, is an approximate translation into Kaurna, but also a poetic response, perhaps even a rebuttal. Developed in conjunction with the Kaurna Language Committee, the Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi, the text states: ‘Nayirda karralika kauwingka taikuthi yara kumarninthi’. This translates to ‘The sky and the outer world are connected in the waters and the two become one’. Without diminishing or downplaying the negative impact of settler society upon the Indigenous population, Kirby attempts to offer something of a positive vision for the embrace of cultural identity.
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