Commissioner: Marco Marcon / Spaced
Description
- HD video (00:28:34);
- Lithographic reproduction;
- Newspaper page-spread
Mandurah Coastal Times, 18.02.15
Credits
Cinematography: Iain Frengley
Post production: Iain Frengley
Design: Warren Olds, Studio Ahoy
Printmaker: Struan Hamilton
Lithographer: Terry Maitland
Supported by
International Art Space, Perth
College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwharangi, Massey University Wellington
Elam School of Fine Arts,
University of Auckland
Sue Grey-Smith and Alisdair Wardle
With thanks to
Harry Nannup, Kim Jameson, Barb Thoms, Carolyn Marks / CASM Gallery, Deidre Robb, Paddi Creevey, Shire of Murray Records Office, Marco Marcon, Katherine Wilkinson, Victor Gentile
spaced 2: future recall was an international residency and exhibition that showcased the artistic, cultural and social outcomes of the second edition of spaced, a recurring international event of socially engaged art. Maddie Leach spent two months in Mandurah in early 2014 and her residency was hosted by the City of Mandurah. On a Cultural Tour organised by the City she was introduced to the Pinjarra Massacre site, its contested narratives and an ongoing impasse surrounding its naming and memorialisation.
What transpired was conversation and research focusing on a large piece of rock marking the massacre site and the removal of two plaques that have been attached to it. It was their noticeable absence, and the sustained disagreement about the language and wording used to write the plaques, that became a persistent force in her thinking. Leach’s project manifested in two parts: a film that carefully records the reproduction of a redacted Shire of Murray fax document on to a large lithographic stone; and a newspaper reproduction of the resulting lithograph, with further information enigmatically removed, printed in the Mandurah Coastal Times on the day the spaced 2: future recall exhibition opened in Perth. The lithograph document was circulated to around 37,000 homes in the Mandurah-Pinjarra region.
The specificity of Leach’s project title – 28th October 2834 – is taken from a recurrent typographic mistake in Council minutes regarding the date of the Pinjarra Massacre (28th October 1834) and intentionally operates as both portent and enigmatic forecast.
