Death of a Memorial

Death of a Memorial brings together Brook Andrew's new wall drawing and Jumping Castle War Memorial, a monumental inflatable installation that collapses boundaries between play and trauma. Emblazoned with black and white patterns derived from Wiradjuri designs, the jumping castle parodies the authority of traditional monuments while interrogating how histories of war, genocide, and colonial violence are remembered and commodified. For this closing iteration, the inflatable is enclosed in a funeral-style mourning chamber. Plastic skulls reference the Aboriginal human remains trade. By staging the work's destruction, Andrew reframes it as a counter-monument—a performance of cultural and historical reckoning that insists memory requires continual renewal rather than static commemoration.