Mark Stoner, Passage, Old Melbourne General Cemetery, Queen Victoria Market, Huntly Barton, Brian Johns
Summary
Maquette for the work 'Passage', a public artwork located at Queen Victoria Market, cnr Therry and Queen Sts
In 1991, Mark Stoner was commissioned to undertake a memorial to this former cemetery site and those once buried here. Stoner's monumental, non-representational sculpture evokes the timelessness and symbolism of an ancient Egyptian pyramid. He has described the work as 'a passage for memories or dreams', but the site is also a place of passage between worlds. Stonemasons worked his design by hand, using a material Stoner chose for its link to the founding of Melbourne.
A bronze plaque alongside a map of the former cemetery reads: 'Passage commemorates the Old Melbourne General Cemetery, which was located on this site between 1837 and 1917. The illustration is based on a 1863 map. In 1878 the market expanded and took up the area between Victoria and Fulton Streets, three quarters of the Jewish allotment and all the Society of Friends and Aboriginal allotments. Between 1920 and 1922, 914 bodies were exhumed and reinterred in other cemeteries around Melbourne. By 1936 the Queen Victoria Market expanded to take up the entire Old Melbourne General Cemetery site.'
