‘Designed to wake people up’: Jonathan Jones unveils major public work at Hyde Park barracks

Stones have transformed 2500 sq metres of the barracks’ courtyard – reframing the site’s colonial history – in a work designed to be worn away From 1819 until 1848, Hyde Park barracks housed some of Sydney’s convict labour force, their toil helping to displace and decimate the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. When Aboriginal people resisted the British colonisers, former and serving convicts sometimes joined armed soldiers and free settlers in murderous retaliatio