Tabula Rasa
The 64 small blackboards that comprise Tabula Rasa are a remnant of the now demolished Campmeadows Primary School, that for several decades was situated at the corner of Graham and Holberry Streets, two blocks from this current site. It is both a work of art and a collection of local archaeology. These black and grey boards were used at the school from its earliest years, especially with the junior grades, for the development of writing, arithmetic and chalk drawing.
Artist Godwin Bradbeer (an ex-pupil of Campmeadows Primary) has written, drawn or painted on a proportion of these works, but the boundary between his involvement and the remnant qualities of the found object, and whoever may have scribbled or worked on it, remains undefined. This is the preferred nature of his collaboration with five decades of schoolchildren and the erasure of both time and neglect.
There is a word for such historically layered and embedded surfaces; palimpsests, and in art there is recognized tradition of the found object as a work of art. The term tabula rasa means ‘erased tablet’ or ‘cleaned slate’. This term has been adapted into psychological and educational language to suggest that as humans we are either born with a blank mind or begin life with innate and embedded knowledge. In other words; are our minds created and formed by nature or through nurture?
Tabula Rasa can be visited in the foyer of the Broadmeadows Community Hub, 180-182 Widford St, Broadmeadows.