Rest in Peace – Kenny Douglas 1943 – 2005

St Kilda wouldn’t be St Kilda without the local characters that have always been part of the streetscape. They are as important as the physical qualities of the land and give this community its unique identity. Monument on Wheels was conceived to pay homage and represent the importance of these people.

The shopping trolley wheels and the weaving text represent the paths both psychological and physical that these people have traversed to survive on the streets. The text is broken up into fragments and the order isn’t immediately evident, just like the speech of some of the people the work refers to. If you want to get the full meaning you have to stop for a minute and think.

Most people who have lived in St Kilda can tell you about a favourite character, often with a fondly described name: track suit man, green man or milk carton man, who constructed millinery extravagances from old milk cartons and wouldn’t leave home without his hat

The work celebrates the resourcefulness and importance of these characters, but also recognises the community that supports these people; restraunteurs that feed them, the people who stop and have a ‘yak’ with John or Kenny as they go about their daily business, or those who handover for the $3 coffee that is really a beverage enjoyed from a brown paper bag.

“They wandered by it’s sane seas because it was a more generous city, not as mean as the others, where the would be singled out as being queer if their lipstick were skew whiff or buttons undone, or speech slurred or hands shaky and yellow with nicotine”.