Local First Nations Women to be Honoured with Life Size Artwork.

Thanks to the efforts of passionate community members, a sculpture honouring three women who significantly impacted the lives of the Kurnai people from the Drouin area will be designed by local artists and put on public display in Baw Baw Shire.

The project titled ‘Three Women on Kurnai Country’ will see local artists Jessie McLennan, Rebecca Vandyk-Hamilton, and Jeannie Haughton collaborate with Kurnai elder Aunty Cheryl Drayton to create a life-size bronze artwork and accompanying historic storytelling piece.

Project Manager and Director at Arts & Health Gippsland Rebecca Vandyk-Hamilton believes the piece will have a significant cultural impact. “This sculptural monument pays tribute to three women who nurtured their families and their wider community, at sometimes great personal cost,” she said. “In this respect it is both cross-culturally relevant and a fitting subject for public commemoration.

“More importantly, it pays respect to First Nations women first as a way of beginning to bring a gender balance to the number of public monuments already erected that honour men. I hope that in future we see other public works of art that commemorate other women who have made a deep and lasting contribution in the Baw Baw region.”

A key feature of the monument is that it will enable storytelling among First Nations people and the whole multicultural community that call Baw

Baw Shire home. Author and playwright Jeannie Haughton, who is also involved with the project, says the new artwork “will provide a physical place and a prompt to recognise the extraordinary contribution of three First Nations women.”

The project is supported by a $155,416 Victorian Women in Public Art Grant and a $40,000 contribution from Council’s Public Art Fund, in line with its commitment to improving gender equality and increasing the recognition and representation of local First Nations people in Baw Baw.