Sea of Hands installation and art exhibition

The Sea of Hands in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is designed by award winning artist Frances Belle Parker, a proud Yaegl woman.

The Sea of Hands concept has been designed as a fully immersive audio-visual experience and centres around the theme of healing country.

The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is partnering with ANTaR, the national organisation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reconciliation and rights, to bring its interactive symbol of reconciliation, the Sea of Hands. 

You can be part of the artwork from 5 April

As part of the exhibition we need thousands of people to come down and plant hands into the lawn of Rathborne Lodge. The design will involve 10,000 hands in the colours of charred and burnt banksia pods.

See the artwork exibition from 10 April

The work will incorporate some audio-visual elements to create a fully immersive, welcoming, inclusive space that allows all who enter to feal healed and at peace and experience that sense of new life. Upon dusk, red and orange lights would swirl through the hands giving a gentle taste of the brilliance of a flame. These lights would gradually transform into green to indicate regrowth and new life and as a colour of healing.

The Garden will extend visitation hours to 9.00 pm until 16 April so visitors can experience the exhibition at night.

About Frances Belle Parker

Frances has been a practising artist for the last 20 years coming to prominence after winning the Blake Prize in 2000 making her the youngest ever winner and the first Indigenous recipient in the prize’s history. Since then she has exhibited nationally and internationally, undertaken art residencies in China and Andorra and worked on several Public Art Projects. See more of Frances' work.