Shorelines Art installation
for the tasmanian centenary of anzac
november 4-9, Tasmanian Parliament lawn, hobart

Shorelines
Michael Henderson
art installation
EUCALYPTUS wood and acrylic. 15,000 pieces.

Installed on the Tasmanian Parliament House Lawn, November 2018

Shorelines speaks of the hope of peace.

The ideas in this work centred on two reflections. The first was on the optimism of the First World War, that it might be “the war to end war”. It is easy to see this as naive. But I considered this hope for peace to be part of why they chose to engage. The second reflection was that peace is not the absence of conflict, but something you can create in the middle of conflict, powerfully described by people like Jesus, who brought peace into conflict through offering compassion, mercy, forgiveness and hope.

Shorelines was also built around two images. It used our Australian shoreline as a metaphor for going on a journey, a threshold moment, something Tasmanians and Australians had to cross to first leave our country, then to enter the conflict, and finally to return to Australia, either physically or spiritually. It also used the image of the Gallipoli Lifeboat. To symbolise peace. And by creating unique boats from the variable forms naturally found in eucalyptus wood. There was one boat created for each of the 15,000 Tasmanian men and women who served. The boats were laid out on the lawn like waves lapping a shore: Shorelines. The journey home was completed when the boats continued past the shoreline, and into the general public's homes after the installation.

The general public was invited to walk through the installation.

Michael's work is commonly rich in symbolism and metaphor, that draws attention to our culture and history and speaks of hope for our world.

Sometimes Peace
by mark tredinnick
written for the Shorelines Installation laying of the last boats ceremony

​For Jodie

​

Down in the saltmarsh along the lake’s shore,
A single egret leans among grasses—who are
What persistence looks like, a weary brown uproar, 
A long time coming—and she is a furled flag
Of surrender, as if she’s given up reluctantly 


On giving in. From well before I woke in the mouth
Of dawn beside you, the butcherbird’s unrelenting call 
To arms—or perhaps it’s to prayer, it’s hard to say— 
Has been flaying the peace of morning more peaceful yet
With phrases full of violent intent. Three swans, scored


On the water like three black notes in the composer’s
Finished phrase, swim between the fingers, poised to play 
Them, of three roughbarked apples. Farther out, a pelican,
Trawling morning waters, gets himself an education
For a breakfast among a school of bream. A single


Shag runs a straight dark topographic line, a grace
Note, north to south, across the shallows. Friarbird
Cadges cigarettes against the raucous outcry of 
The wattlebirds. The call to arms of butcherbird
Cries on. Magpie lark and sheoak, paperbark and nesting


Herons and sedge: the whole morning rises up against 
What cannot be endured: the ping of emails coming in 
Like ordnance, lines of thought at odds with what
Sustains the earth and oils the peaceful engine
Of the heart. Sometimes you find yourself 


At war. Most often with yourself. This morning 
It’s the wrens at war with solitude in the grass beneath
The trees. Sometimes war’s a song you have to join
And sing until it’s sung. Sometimes peace will not
Endure until you find a boat and cross a world


Of other people’s seas to talk some violence down
By doing some yourself. Until it ends. Until you break
The lines of killing thought and spawn a space for love.
Sometimes peace cannot be kept by keeping it; peace
Keeps those who stand for what peace makes. No sure lines


Defend against bad moves time wants to bust--
Not the rows you harrow in the rusting fields; not
The lines your people’s feet sing up walking
Your country awake; not the lines of hope, the rope
That swings your children gaily in the orchard of your eye. 



And on these shores a hundred years ago, the sea
Washed up a dozen foreign feuds and currencies and fables,
Whose morals called you away. And so you left
The factory, the dinner table, the field, fifteen
Thousand reasons not to go, but nonetheless,


A war to end all wars to join, and so you boarded
Boats and sailed. You fooled yourself you went
For fun; you said you went for Empire, for Honour,
For six weeks’ tops. It was for years; for some, it was 
For keeps. For war will maim or murder no matter


Why you think you go. No matter that
You didn’t pick the fight or field. No war
Can end all war; no peace will ever hold. 
But it seems right to thank the souls who try.
Flight would fail the birds, you feel,


If few birds chose to fly. And peace would
Fail if no one said a word for it or held its lines.
And here today, we lie along this closer shore
In grasses, inside the privilege of peace
Our private wars, my love, have won.


And now you break a pumpkin scone, like bread,
And cast its several pieces, like the Lord himself,
Upon the grass. Nothing comes to claim it until
At nine the sun breaks out, and a wattlebird
Comes in shyly for the kill and soon word


Will be scent among the other birds and beings
Who comprise a peace we keep so deep it threatens    
To end all war. Three swans swim the lake again, two herons
Make off with the afternoon, and in the sheoaks older
Voices sing. And all the words they sing become the shore.