AustLit

'On 1 September 2021, Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Julie Gough’s work ‘Breathing Space’ was unveiled in Hobart. This artwork is part of the City of Hobart’s ‘Crowther Reinterpretation Project’, for which four artists have been invited to create works responding to the statue of William Crowther. The project aims to ‘acknowledge, question, provoke discussion or increase awareness’ about Crowther, especially his treatment of the body of well-known Aboriginal leader William Lanne after his death in the 1860s. In Gough’s work, the statue of Crowther has been removed from public view, boxed up in a black timber crate. Visitors can scan a QR code nearby and be directed to a webpage that provides a printable amended wording for the plinth. Gough told ABC Hobart that she had avoided walking past the statue for 20 years, but now the statue was covered, ‘I can sit here, knowing he's not looking down on us…when he was crated you could feel Hobart breathe. It was amazing.' (Editorial introduction)