The Crossbar building (the black building at left) will be covered in photographs.

The photographs of more than 220 Australians born in more than 190 countries will be mounted onto the walls of the Crossbar building at Federation Square for Australia Day on Saturday, January 26, 2008.

Fed Square CEO Kate Brennan decided on the installation as a better way to integrate the project into the daily life of the square and to ensure maximum exposure for the project.

Photographer Michel Lawrence has spent the past two years photographing at least one person from every country of the world who now live here in Australia. The project will be seen as an installation at Fed Square, in a Selected Works exhibition at Australian Galleries in Collingwood and in a large format photographic book, also titled All of Us.

The exhibition will feature large scale prints measuring either 2metres by 1 metre or as 1metre by 1 metre and will be mounted directly to the outer surface of the Crossbar building by a team of specialists, which is expected to take several days to install. There will also be several short audio visual productions which will feature on the brand new big screen at Fed Square.

Kate Brennan announced the launch date this week and said she expects more than a million people will see the exhibition which is expected to remain in place until Diversity Week.

Central America:

Haiti
Netherlands Antilles
Puerto Rico

Europe:

Luxembourg

Africa:

Burkina Faso
Chad
Comoros
Gabon
Guinea
Guinea Bisseau

Mauritania

Mayotte
Réunion
Swaziland
Tanzania

Middle East:

Georgia
Jordan
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Yemen

Asia:

Georgia
Macao
Mongolia
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan

Oceania:

Norfolk Island
New Caledonia
Vanuatu
Guam

www.allofus.com.au

The book features photographs of the extraordinary and diverse people who now make up about 25% of the Australian population including people from both North and South Korea, to tiny African countries such as Togo and the Ivory Coast to the Stans in northern Asia which were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. It’s a rich and varied tapestry and the book contains fascinating insights to these people and how they arrived in extended captions which accompany each photograph. The book is being published by Scribe Publications and will have a RRP of $59.95 and will be available in all good bookstores. It will also be available for sale on the All of Us website.

www.allofus.com.au

To all those wonderful people who have invited us into their homes to take a photograph- THANK YOU. This record will not be possible without the unconditional support of all those people who now call Australia home- but who weren’t born here.

The idea is to show Australia- and the world- how it is possible for all these people to live together in peace and harmony.

Michel Lawrence

www.allofus.com.au

But it’s not that simple.

The United Nations recognises about 191 countries. But I am not just covering countries as such. I have been working from a list compiled by the Australian census. And they list about 185 birthplaces of Australian residents.

But it gets more complicated. Because, some countries have complex multi racial make-ups themselves. For instance, in India you could probably take at least 12 photographs of different groups. I have opted to photograph one from the South and one from the North.

The same is true-to as lesser extent- in China, Sri Lanka, even countries like Afghanistan. The Census also recognises England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Not just the United Kingdom!

So I can’t really give anyone a firm number until we finish. But I would expect somewhere near 200!