This article investigates how notions of ephemerality in temporary public art projects are recast by the unforeseen interference of both natural and commercial forces. Specifically, it will examine the complex elision of life and afterlife where the notion of a fixed endpoint for temporary place-based artworks is rendered complex by degrees of undecidability and contingency. Focusing on the third iteration of the Treatment Public Art Project in Melbourne and specifically Linda Tegg's Tending a Line in the Year of the Rabbit (2023–), this study explores how temporary artistic intervention into environmentally contested and damaged urban sites can serve to shift both the meanings and future aspirations for their ecological complexity and vibrancy.

In reflecting on the afterlife of the project, the authors consider a myriad of ways in which notions of the temporary can be configured to exceed their supposed temporal limits courtesy of the seed bank, community engagement and conventional notions of documentation.

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Image: Linda Tegg Tending a Line in the Year of the Rabbit, 2023 Plains Grassland plants, landscape interventions, patterns of boundary making and care Artwork documentation, December 2023 Originally commissioned for Treatment III Photograph courtesy of the Artist