"Memento Mori" — Remember that you must die. While a vivid reminder of our own mortality, this Latin phrase is not intended to be morbid or inspire dread, but to help us confront our fear of death and remind us of the transient nature of life.

 

This concept has been reflected in art, philosophy, literature and architecture throughout history. As Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo: “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” (64a)

 

In ancient Greek mythology our lives were imagined as a single thread, and the keepers of this thread, and arbiters of our inevitable fate, were personified as three sisters known as the Moirai. Clotho the ‘spinner’ spun a person’s thread at birth; Lachesis the ‘alloter’ measured the thread of life; and finally Atropos the ‘unturnable’ cut the thread, symbolising the end of life. 

 

The inevitability of death provides the foundation for the Hellenic Museum’s latest contemporary art commission, Memento Mori, by UK-born and Sydney based painter and illustrator Steven Nuttall. Across three outdoor panels in the Museum forecourt, the Moirai ask all who pass by to pause and consider: are you really living?