Women’s Suffrage Memorial
Client: City of Melbourne & Arts VIC
Artists: Susan Hewitt & Penelope Lee
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in Victoria, the State Government and City of Melbourne partnered to commission a major public artwork to be located in Melbourne’s CBD. The work, Great Petition, references the Monster Petition signed by 30,000 Victorian women in just six weeks in 1891 calling for the right to vote. The original petition is now housed at the Public Record Office, Victoria, while the sculpture is sited in Burston Reserve, in close proximity to Parliament House, where the original petition was delivered.
The twenty metre long scroll–like form comprises two steel elements that appear to submerge either side of the pathway that intersects the park, thereby enfolding pedestrians in the work as they pass through its form. The plinth, designed in consideration of the sloping site, is of bluestone, and grounds the artwork in this most typical Melbourne material.