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Tuesday, 26 October 2021
“This is an amazing opportunity to be able to create public artwork that tells a deeper part of the coastline’s story. Through engagement with the Northern Beaches Aboriginal community, I hope we can tell stories that are relevant as well as convey the underlying messages of the country and the people who walked this land before us.” – Frances Belle Parker.

Those words are from Frances Belle Parker, artist, mother and proud Yaegl woman from Maclean, New South Wales. Council has commissioned her to create public art for our Aboriginal Art & Storytelling Project, the first major component and underpinning theme of our Coast Walk Public Art Program. 

The project aims to acknowledge, respect and share the stories of the Northern Beaches Aboriginal people through a series of contemporary public artworks along the 36km Coast Walk, from Manly to Palm Beach.

Frances will engage with our local Aboriginal community to identify significant and relevant sites for storytelling through the artwork.  The artist has significant family connections on the Northern Beaches.

The works will enrich Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people’s experience of the region without compromising environmentally fragile and culturally sensitive sites.

Once in place in 2022, works will help connect people to the landscape, each other, and to past, present, and future.

About the artist

Frances has been a practising artist for the last 20 years, coming to prominence after winning the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre Blake Prize in 2000; she is the youngest ever winner and the first Aboriginal recipient in the prize’s history.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally, undertaken art residencies in China and Andorra and worked on several public art projects, including her recent digital work Angwirri on the sails of the Sydney Opera House, on 26 January 2021.

She is working with public art and architectural design group UAP Australia, and independent curator Tess Allas, to realise this project.