Outside a dormant infectious diseases hospital, the garden is being revegetated by a group of horticultural students. Not as it was—a stretch of mowed grass—but as it could become. Reeds on the dam hum with the electrical pump. A long winding stretch of blue hose twists around the water’s edge. Frogs call. Small purple daisies shimmer as a blue-tongued lizard moves into the mulch. Heat haze lifts off the concrete pavement, blurring the vegetation around it. Sometimes the only thing that makes the garden legible is the stretch of concrete path.
In Cascade of Sighing, pill-shaped charcoal gaps in the pavement and a photocopied toy snake, made from a tree branch, stretch their bodies across the pages. This 32-page booklet includes drawings, photocopies and text. Cascade of Sighing was developed by artist Briony Galligan through her residency at the AIDS Memorial Garden adjacent to the old Fairfield Hospital in 2025.
Risograph printed in black ink
1st edition of 100
32 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm, softcover, Stray Pages (Naarm/Melbourne).