Artists addressing military histories and Indigenous-settler relations awarded ARC Discovery Grant
Artists at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Music (FFAM), in collaboration with Faculty of Arts researchers, have been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects 2026 grant for their project, Living memorials, art in dialogue.
Chief Investigators on the project, Dr Lisa Radford (FFAM), Ms Yhonnie Scarce (FFAM) and Associate Professor Juliet Rogers (Arts), received a total of $562,478 in funding.
Living memorials, art in dialogue centres on the site of Maralinga, where an undocumented number of Indigenous people were killed, as means for addressing military violences of the past toward Indigenous people in Australia.
The project recognises that art and testimony are powerful mechanisms for acknowledging past wrongs and creating a shared memory of trauma and injustice. It argues that any real recognition of violent histories, loss, and trauma requires dialogue, tangible acknowledgment, and a relationship to place.
The project is an innovative model of bearing witness to Australia’s past violence through art in dialogue with land and its history.
Investigators Lisa Radford, Yhonnie Scarce and Juliet Rogers said the grant will enable the research team to facilitate a ‘living memorial’ through dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and audiences—both locally and globally— traversing language, borders, and histories.
“Contemporary Indigenous artists have played a significant role in re-imaging the histories of colonisation in Australia as a form of witnessing. The significance of this award is that it brings non-Indigenous and Indigenous artists together, giving them the time and resources to build on this work and examine the role of art in witnessing political trauma and political memory by encountering and addressing history and land together.”
Professor Marie Sierra, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, congratulated the team on receiving the grant.
“This important project will help to address the lack of acknowledgement of past violence toward Indigenous people in Australia, and is a testament to the important role art plays in creating the conditions for truthful dialogue,” she said.
The ARC Discovery Program supports research, and research training, across all disciplines (excluding clinical and other medical research) that addresses a significant problem or gap in knowledge and represents value for money.
University of Melbourne researchers have been awarded 60 Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects 2026 Round One grants worth over $47 million.