Writing the Square: Paul Carter's Nearamnew and the Art of Federation

Abstract

Visiting Australia for "The Year Of the Built Environment City Talk" Beatriz Colomina said of Federation Square" It wears crazy-paving clothing all over it. What is it saying?" In this paper I focus on some of that "crazy paving", Paul Carter’s artwork Nearamnew, a work that marks the ground of Federation Square as a site of historical, social and political negotiation. Nearamnew, I argue, is a strangely joyous promise of a different kind of locality and a different way of thinking, writing and speaking into the impasses of Australian place.