Branko Miletic
For Our Country is the inaugural National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial, commissioned by the Australian War memorial (AWM) and is located on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country.
The work provides a space from which to contemplate and commemorate Indigenous connection to country and the sacrifice that Indigenous serving men and woman have made in the protection of their country. A basalt stone field outlines the outer face of the memorial, establishing a collective gathering space defined by a two-way mirror glass veil which captures the landscape and the viewer within a cloud of mirrored lenses.
This reflection is seen to exist on the other side of this veil, establishing an empathetic othering whereby a viewer can witness themselves and their surroundings as existing elsewhere, both in space and time, allowing the contemplation of an indigenous gaze and an indigenous experience of war, conflict and sacrifice.