In Sue Ford’s radical short film Egami, Melbourne’s imposing Shrine of Remembrance is rebadged the “New Settlers’ Temple of Wars” by the artist’s intergalactic visitor, who observes from a spaceship. The Shrine is one of many familiar Melbourne landmarks rendered as totalitarian monuments, which have usurped the lands of ‘the Dreaming People’, of which there is no sign left except in Swanston St souvenir stores. In Egami, fashion mannequins are interpreted as women for sale, statues are erected for white men and war, and Hamer Hall is a survival bunker, in a work that’s exploration of Australian identity and feminism is still relevant today. — ACMI
