The Domain - Veil of Trees

"Veil of Trees" Mrs Macquarie's Road, The Domain Created by Janet Laurence & Jisuk Han Installed 1999 The creation of a passage of reflection, a space where memory is gathered. Memory is embodied within each glass panel – traces of minerals, ash and seeds of indigenous trees are enclosed together with excerpts of Australian poetry and texts selected for their evocation of the nature of trees. Amidst the translucent glass panels a ribbon of one hundred Red Forest gums – eucalyptus tereticornis – which once forested this site have been planted, each tree grown from the seed of the original Red Forest gums which existed prior to European settlement. Weaving either side of the ribbon of forest and panels clumps of native grasses define the linearity of the passage, engaging the visitor into, along and through this site of regeneration.

One of the fragments of a poem, this one by Judith Wright called "The Cedars": For it is anguish to be reborn and reborn: at every return of the overmastering season to shed our lives in pain, to waken into the cold, to become naked, while with unbearable effort we make way for the new sap that burns along old channels- while out of our life's substance, the inmost of our being, form those brief flowers, those sacrifices, soon falling, which spring the returner demands, and demands for ever.