This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
12.41734° S, 130.83168° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Intertwined is a pair of bronze jellyfish, about three metres, at the entrance to East Point Reserve in Darwin – and the striking thing about them is that the bronze is woven.
The work was made by the artist Aly de Groot in collaboration with Dr Aunty Bilawara Lee, a Larrakia Senior Elder, and was commissioned by the City of Darwin in 2014. It was the first large public artwork the two had made together, and they have since worked together on others. Casting a woven form in bronze preserves every strand of the original weaving at monumental scale, so the sculptures read as basketry and as metal simultaneously – an open, translucent structure in a material normally used for solid mass.
That choice suits the subject unusually well. Jellyfish are among the most transparent animals in the sea, and Darwin's waters are defined by them: box jellyfish and Irukandji make the Top End's beaches unswimmable through the wet season, a fact that shapes local life more than almost any other piece of natural history. A jellyfish here is not decorative wildlife. It is a seasonal condition.
East Point Reserve is one of the largest reserves in the Darwin municipality – about 200 hectares of green space that the City of Darwin has managed since 1984, holding a military history going back to 1932, the Darwin Military Museum and the gun turret precinct. The jellyfish sit at the entrance to all of it.
The reserve is free and open, and the sculptures are best seen with the light behind them, when the woven structure reads through.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
City of Darwin documentation confirms the three-metre Intertwined jellyfish installation inside East Point Reserve. The NT Place Names Register provides a current reserve coordinate.
ACCESS
Public artwork inside East Point Reserve, near the reserve entrance/waterfront. Darwin City Council's official reserve map shows several named car parks (P1-P7) throughout East Point Reserve, but the specific car park nearest the jellyfish sculptures has not yet been independently pinned. Use designated public parking within the reserve and approach on foot; do not stop on the road at the sculpture.
