Jack Gillmer’s Contemporary Songlines
Worimi and Biripi architect Jack Gillmer puts collaboration and Country first as the fourth galang residency recipient at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.
‘So, how do you protest through architecture? As First Nations people, we’ve always had to protest and advocate for change. So, it’s using architecture as a vessel to do that, which is something that really excites me. Sometimes you have to go against the grain and colonial controls for cultural safety.’
As a Worimi/Biripi guri (man) who grew up north of the Hawkesbury River, Jack Gillmer was awakened to the transformative power of designing with Country while studying architecture at Newcastle University last decade. Each morning he’d carpool up from the Central Coast with his Aunty, Leanne Holt, then a director of the university’s Wollotuka Institute, and start the day by lighting the fire in the Birabahn Building’s central north-facing heart. ‘Every morning, you’d sit and listen and watch Country evolve through the day,’ Gillmer recalls. ‘You’d observe other people enter the building through different pathways, and you’d introduce yourself to people or you’d continue your relationship.’
Birabahn, the institute’s award-winning home, is named for the Awabakal people’s eaglehawk totem and the Aboriginal scholar of the same name. It was designed by Richard Leplastrier and Peter Stutchbury to resemble the bird’s outstretched wings when viewed from above. Leplastrier was also Gillmer’s mentoring professor during his time at Newcastle University, which has continued into a lasting friendship. And it was Leplastrier, celebrated for his spiritual response to nature, who guided the architecture student towards his research subject – the sacred headland of Yirannali watching over the Pacific Ocean and surrounding landscapes – and towards embracing his Aboriginality through the medium of architecture. Gillmer’s Masters project conceived not a Western-style building for the ‘falling rocks’ site, but an open portal for revealing knowledges in the landscape.
