Tears for What Was Done

This major new sculptural/neon work was commissioned by ACCA as its inaugural sculptural work for its exterior site (funded by the Australia Council) for Jones' solo exhibition, Darwin with Tears. The work comprised 200 water-filled 44 gallon drums and a large white neon sign, tears for what was done, in handwriting (to appear more vulnerable) on the side of ACCA itself with the drums rusting to become an extension of the rusted building and the water evaporating (shockingly quickly). The work, massive in scale, was seen from many parts of the city, thereby allowing many to engage with it as part of their daily lives. Using the powerfully evocative quality of these drums in Australia, this project began as research on emotion/environment in residencies at Edith Cowan University, 2002-3 at a site surrounded by homeless aboriginal people in central Perth. The tears however, quickly found another resonance after the Bali bombings that killed many Perth people. Jones's research again addressed the use of a proposition-as-experience and the viewers' propensity to create metaphors from their own experiences, ie to create the subject of the artwork itself. In seeking to encapsulate the size of the issue of global warning in the ACCA research, scale itself became the research subject. The success of the project was evident in the work's ability to encompass individuals' private grief (as they walked among the drums) as well as the issue of rainfall loss in Melbourne. This potent single image that was specific but remained open to a wide range of interpretations provided the major starting point for an examination of possible climate change imagery for Jones' next 10 year series, The Avoca Project. It was the subject of a half-page image in the Age Newspaper (with a review by Robert Nelson) and written about by ACCA Director Juliana Engberg in the accompanying book, Darwin with Tears.