Shock at BOAA installation damage

WHILE the inaugural BOAA – Biennale of Australian Art 2018 – continues to bring visitors to Ballarat and is being hailed a success, one art installation on the foreshore of Lake Wendouree has been vandalised.

The installation ‘We make A Stand’, a collaboration between Ballarat refugee activist and artist Wendy Bolger and Melbourne photographer Paul Dunn, has had three posters, which were wrapped around trees, removed.

Bolger said the posters had been taken away completely.

“They are quite bulky posters, as well, and whoever has come in has obviously been well organised because they would have need a van or something to actually take them away,” she said.

The posters contained messages such as ‘do not abandon vulnerable people’ also had images of people and were quite large – approximately 2m x 4m and were attached to a number of trees.

“It has taken 12 months or so with the planning and the final result,” Bolger said.

“Paul has created these wonderful images of people at rallies, people making a stand about their concern about how the Australian Government is making policies and treating refugees.”

Bolger said that she felt quite disturbed about the incident.

“This is the second time they have been taken down,” she said.

“The first time they left them on the ground, all of them were taken down – obviously someone is making their own stand. It would seem it is a protest against refugees, which is a worry, particularly when we are trying to raise the public awareness as to what’s going on, in terms of the treatment of refugees.

“I would like to be able to talk to those people who actually took these banners down and see just what is really worrying them about refugees.

“Mainly it’s often fear that is the cause of peoples’ reaction to something like this and to listen to these people, to their fear.

“BOAA has been fantastic to allow us to create a venue to make a stand and raise public awareness as to the justice for refuges, basically, human rights – lets show compassion rather than be overshadowed by politics.”