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• The Australian Flag

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  By Misho Baranovic and Oliver Lang

  

  Flinders Street, Melbourne by Misho Baranovic

  Australia celebrated its 224^th birthday on January 26^th 2012. Over the last decade, Australia Day has transformed from a low-key public holiday into a large-scale national event, with ceremonies, parties and festivals filling the day.

  The Australian flag has played a central role in this transition.  Where previously you would see the occasional towel or singlet sporting the flag, now the day is wrapped in the Union Jack and Southern Cross.  The flag is everywhere on Australia Day, sticking out of car windows, tattooed on hairy backs, and temporarily stuck on cheeks.

  The motivation to display and meaning attached to the flag has also changed over the last ten years.  Thinking back to the Olympics in 2000, the flag was a symbol of a proud, welcoming—if a little competitive—country.  Five years later, at the 2005 Cronulla race riots, the flag was used as body armour, a draped defence of ‘Australian values’.  Over those few December days, images of hate and violence were seeped in the flag’s colours.

  In recent years, the display of the flag has become increasingly contested, a touchstone of social, political and academic debate.  It has been banned at festivals, burned at protests, and supposedly found to make people more racist.

  With all this in mind, MPG members Oliver Lang, in Sydney, and Misho Baranovic, in Melbourne, went out on Australia Day to document the nation’s flag. The following 8 images show the many representations of the Australian flag in 2012.  We at MPG hope you enjoy the series.  Feel free to add any comments below. 

  

  Untitled, Hyde Park, Sydney by Oliver Lang

  

  Swanston Street, Melbourne by Misho Baranovic

  

  Dingo and baby, Elizabeth St, Sydney by Oliver Lang

  

  Untitled, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney by Oliver Lang

  

  Swanston Street, Melbourne by Misho Baranovic

  

  Mother and Child, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney by Oliver Lang

  

  Flinders Street, Melbourne by Misho Baranovic

  
  

  
  

  9 Feb 2012 / 18 notes