Search for knowledge (1995) is a six-part stone installation by Margaret Worth, an artist renowned for her pioneering work in the field of abstraction in the 1960s and 70s, and later in sculpture and environmental art.

Former Vice Chancellor Professor John Lovering personally commissioned Worth having admired her public art concepts proposed for the regional South Australian town of Waikerie.  Responding to his brief to represent “freedom and rigour as the basis for knowledge”, Worth created an installation of six stones: the warm-toned calca granite engraved to symbolise ’rigour’, the darker split and etched norite indicative of the liberation of ’freedom’, and the smaller norite boulders representing knowledge” yet to be gained through the freedom and rigour of investigation”.[1]

Once positioned on open lawn on the south ridge at Bedford Park, Search for knowledge has since become embedded in its surrounding landscape amongst shrubs and grasses. Though less visible, the boulders quietly uphold values that continue to resonate with Flinders University—rigour and freedom serving as foundations for integrity and innovation.

[1] Margaret Worth, personal communication with Flinders University Art Museum, February 10, 2025.