Knox City - 'Parking' Project Prototype

Boronia, the suburb name and railway station, made me begin to consider at the Knox site the naturally occurring vegetation that had been removed for the development.

As Knox was the first American style car suburb in Melbourne, I wondered what might be under the car park asphalt – what used to be there. This was prompted by a story I was told about the resilience of nature when I was living in the Blue Mountains. A fifty years old garden shed was being demolished. The concrete slab was removed and a few weeks later the seeds of local wildflowers that had lain dormant in the soil germinated.

I researched plants indigenous to the Knox area. I came across online an inventory of indigenous plant species extracted from the document ‘Sites of Biological Significance in Knox’ drafted in 2004 by Dr G. Lorimer. The document categorised theenvironmental status of plants in the Knox area. i.e.) ‘X’ presumed extinct; ‘C’ Critically endangered; ‘E’ Endangered; ‘V’ Vulnerable; ‘R’ Rare; ‘K’ Suspected to be rare or threatened; ‘S’ Secure but not abundant or common; ‘L’ Least concern. There was in fact a Knox City project through the 1990’s that involved re-establishing habitat for the endangered Sword-Grass Brown Butterfly by planting its favoured fruit Red-Fruit Saw-Sedge..

Plants such as the Heart Lip Spider Orchid were deemed extinct. The Grey Everlasting (Ozothamnus obcordatus) was critically endangered with one plant existing in Boronia. The Silver Banksia (Banksia marginata) was vulnerable as was the Hairy Speedwell (Veronica calycina). The Tender Brake (Pteris tremula) was rare. This is only a small sample from the list.

During research for images of these plants, I located a botanical illustration of a Banksia marginata dated 1843 tentatively attributed to Samuel Curtis.

'Parking'

I propose to reinstate nature in the car park and reclaim the public space currently dominated by cars. I will install car covers over the cars. The covers at Knox would have large-scale drawings cut through the cover material. The drawing at Knox would focus on at risk indigenous species. Utilising a pre-existing product reduces costs and due to its protective function that is cancelled out through cutting, it brings into play levels of questioning such as what needs to be protected. Being installed over cars at shopping centres it also raises issues surrounding consumption of goods and fossil fuels,

This concept could form the prototype of a much larger guerrilla installation of covered cars. This could occur at other large scale shopping destinations such as Highpoint and Chadstone. Artists would be invited to participate in a large-scale public artwork, where each would be involved in producing an individual creative response that would comprise part of a larger scale collaborative work.