This project will invite visual artists, designers, musicians, a photographer, a writer and an architect, to reimagine the failed utopian vision of the largely forgotten town called South Hedland, situated in the north of Western Australia.
Construction of the town was abandoned in 1974 because of the controversies surrounding the radical concepts of its visionary architects. This incompleteness has created an indeterminacy that may be interpreted as potentially holding multiple radical futures.
Through a process of collaborative place-making, the artists will actuate a zone of permanent play in order to explore these speculative futures. This zone will be presented to the public through exhibition and a major publication called “Headland”.
Participating artists
Any conversation about radical or progressive futures in the twenty-first century must necessarily be a diverse and global one, and for this reason a transnational selection of artists have been invited to create a zone of permanent play called Headland. The following is a list of the confirmed artists.
Andreas Angelidakis (b. 1968 Athens, Greece)
From the beginning of his career Andreas Angelidakis has been working at the intersection of art and architecture, often expanding into other disciplines such as curating and writing. Angelidakis has designed a number of major works including CrashPad for the 8th Berlin Biennial, Kunstwerke (2014), Group Mountain for The Breeder (Athens, 2013), The Angelo Foundation Headquarters with Angelo Plessas for Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2009), and Hotel Blue Wave, Inmo Gallery (Los Angeles, 2006). He has designed a number of large-scale group exhibitions, most recently DO-IT Moscow, at the Garage Center for Contemporary Art, Μοσχα (2014), and System of Objects for the DESTE Foundation, (Athens, 2013).
Robert Cook (b. 1970, Geraldton, Western Australia)
Robert Cook’s writing has been featured in art publications in Australia and internationally. Working from a background in psychoanalytic thought and contemporary theory, his writing engages with craft and design, photography and exploratory art practices. Such work has been produced in traditional formats and within the idiom of ficto-criticism. His collaboration with Max Pam, Narcolepsy, was included in the 2012 Adelaide Biennale, Art Gallery of South Australia. Robert Cook is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Photography and Design at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
Joe Hamilton (b. 1982 Tasmania)
Joe Hamilton makes use of technology and found material to create intricate and complex compositions online, offline and in-between. His recent work questions our established notions of the natural environment within a society that is becoming increasingly networked. His work has been shown in recent group exhibitions at The Moving Museum Istanbul, The Austrian Film Museum (Penetrating Surfaces), Pablo’s Birthday in New York (Like New Landscape), The London Art Fair (Photo 50) and Palazzo Peckham in Venice.
Cat Hope (lives in Perth, Western Australia)
Cat Hope is a scholar, musician and composer whose accomplishments include the founding of the music ensemble Decibel. Her interdisciplinary practice includes film, video, performance and installation and has taken her on numerous tours around Australia, the USA, Japan and Europe. Her recordings are distributed and published worldwide, and she has written soundscapes for dance and theatre companies as well as commissions for film and pure music works.
Donnachie, Simionato & Sons Award-winning designers and artists, Karen ann Donnachie (1971) and Andy Simionato (1968) have been experimental publishers of on and off-line works such as This is a magazine (about nothing) from 2002 and more recently Atomic Activity Books from 2008. These works are described as influential by Lauren Parker in her V&A Museum book Interplay (2004), and “a publishing phenomenon” by Adrian Shaugnessy in the UK Journal for Illustration and Made Images (2006), where he went on to say “this is more than a book, not since Andy Warhol’s Interview this is a portable exhibition.” Their works have been exhibited internationally from the Triennale Design Museum of Milan, Italy (2013), to the Museum of Modern Art of Arnhem (2003) and have appeared in publications such as Vogue Italia, Rolling Stone, Vision China, and Amsterdam Weekly. The duo have conducted lectures and workshops through many universities and cultural Institutions around the world such as the London College of Communication, the UIAV (University of International Visual Arts of Venice), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), the University of Vilnius (Lithuania), Hochschule Architektur of Liechtenstein, and ARCO (Madrid). Currently they live in Perth, Western Australia with their children Jasper and Indigo.
Support
Headland is a project that will unfold at the intersection of personal narratives, social histories, speculative interpretations, and the ancient history of the land on which it happens. This project in general, and the artists directly, will be informed not only by archival materials, but significantly by a number of ongoing conversations with individuals and organisations throughout its development. Key voices in this conversation are the children of the original architects, as well as the indigenous peoples and original custodians of the land.
Vito Comar is the son of Archibaldo Comar, the visionary architect of the original plans for the site that is now known as South Hedland. Vito Comar is also a leading architect, with a dedication to eco-responsibility including his unrealised radical proposals for Sydney’s inner city buildings with self-contained energy sources for the 1990s. He is currently a University professor in Brazil, where he is based. Vito Comar remains dedicated to researching the impact of industry on the indigenous peoples of the Amazonian forests. Prof. Comar has granted his permission for interviews as well as providing access to his personal archive including his father’s original documents and plans for the Town of South Hedland.
Marina Comar is the daughter of Archibaldo Comar. She teaches languages at secondary school, and travels extensively. Ms Comar has provided invaluable first hand accounts of her father’s work from the perspective of her personal experiences as she travelled to many of the work sites for which her father was designing. Ms Comar has also granted access to her personal archives of newspaper clippings, letters and drawings.
IBN Corporation is owned by the Banyjima, Milyuranpa Banyjima, Minadhu and Nyiyaparli Aboriginal Corporations. The traditional lands of the IBN people are in the high country of North Western Australia. The Board members of the IBN corporation have been contacted and have indicated a willingness to discuss the project further in order to suggest members of the community that could be invited to contribute to the project. There cannot be a deep discussion of the town of South Hedland without engaging with the traditional peoples of the country on which it was built.