In consultation with Sydney coastal Aboriginal women, award-winning Dharawal and Yuin artist Alison Page has been commissioned by Lendlease to develop a major new permanent public artwork. 

Titled Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising), the new 5.5-metre-high cast bronze sculpture portrays an Aboriginal woman rising powerfully from a body of water and will be unveiled outside the Waldorf Astoria Sydney hotel at Circular Quay.

Led by Alison Page, an award-winning First Nations creative at the forefront of contemporary Australian Aboriginal art and design, the project has been developed in conversation with curatorial and cultural advisor Rhoda Roberts AO as well as the newly formed Sydney Coastal Aboriginal Women’s Group.

Rising with strength and resilience 

Part woman and part whale, the figure represents the deep connection Aboriginal people have to Country and serves as an invitation for viewers to connect with her strength and resilience.

“Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising) emerges from the water below the city, a place of spiritual potency for Dharawal women,” Page says.

“She is the mixing of the salt water and the fresh water, her energy and essence lives within the Aboriginal women of Sydney today. She is every black woman, every mother, daughter, sister, aunty. She is Country.”

Lendlease development project director Steve McGillivray says public spaces have the potential to “act as canvases for cultural expression”, deepening “the connections between people and place”.

“This new major public artwork by Alison Page will become a prominent and powerful feature along the Circular Quay waterfront, drawing people in and stimulating conversation with its strength of story,” he says.

Artist impression of Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising)

A meaningful body of work 

Page began her career in the late 1990s, working in Australia’s first Aboriginal architecture and interior design group, Merrima. She is currently associate dean (Indigenous Leadership and Engagement) at UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, and a member of several cultural boards.

Her public projects include Wellama (2019), a permanent film installation at Barangaroo, and The Eyes of the Land and the Sea (2020) sculpture at Kamay Botany Bay National Park.

Alongside Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising), she is currently working on a number of permanent sculpture projects in Sydney for the redevelopment of the David Jones building, the Sydney Fish Markets, Westmead Children’s Hospital, M6 Parklands and Bondi Pavilion.

Sydney Coastal Aboriginal Women’s Group

The development of Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising) has served as a catalyst for the Sydney Coastal Aboriginal Women’s Group – uniting this body of over 20 women for this project and creating a stronghold of local Traditional Owners for the Coastal Sydney region.

The installation of Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising) is set to begin in 2026.

Lead image of artist impression of Badjgama Ngunda Whuliwulawala (Black Women Rising). All images supplied.

Related: We interviewed Alison Page in 2024 about her book Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers, co-authored with Paul Memmot, here.