Temporary public art commission supported by The Banco Group & The City of Yarra
Artwork location – External hoarding of Smith & Co. 166 Smith St, Collingwood, VIC
Artist: Domenico de Clario
December Hoarding Project 2014

Wednesday 10 December, 2014 saw multi disciplinary artist Domenico de Clario approached the hoarding that bordered the Smith & Co development in Collingwood with an myriad of coloured spray cans and acrylic paint to create ‘gift’, a 15 metre x 2.1 m static public art work inspired by ‘gift’, a poem by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz.

“In august 1956 I arrived in Melbourne from Trieste, Italy, with my family and a thousand other migrants in the ex-hospital ship ‘Toscana’.
After berthing at Station Pier all of us were disgorged into a Melbourne Sunday afternoon.
Our first address was 35 Smith Street and I describe six further memories I have of this street (no 69; corner of Smith and Gertrude; no 232; corner Smith and Victoria parade; no 145 and no 325) and thirteen other inner Melbourne streets in my book titled ‘A Tertiary World’.”

I dedicate the following poem by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz to Smith Street and to all of the people who have populated it since its birth. My hope is that this Smith St Hoarding Project is a steadying, calming influence to remind us all that what we have is enough.”

Gift
by Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.

Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.

Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

I knew no one worth my envying him.

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.