I STAY (Ngaya ngalawa)

You might have driven or walked past this and assumed it was a news or financial tickertape – something to do with business. Perhaps this is part of the charm of the piece: staring into the middle distance as you wait on the corner crossing, the words scrolling down the 19-metre steel column take you by surprise; this is poetry, hiding in plain site in the CBD. American artist Jenny Holzer won a competition for a public artwork on the site, funded by the developer. The resulting work is rooted in the history of this land and its original owners: the scrolling text is comprised of around 300 pieces of text (including songs, poems, stories and autobiography) by about 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers – including Sally Morgan, Anita Heiss, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Ruby Langford Ginibi – some in English, others in original language.