PORT ARTHUR PROJECT

Port Arthur Project aims to enrich public understanding and perception of Port Arthur through site-specific contemporary visual art. The result of a unique collaboration between Ten Days on the Island (TDOTI), the Port Arthur Historic Site (PAHS) and the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, and the project will commission up to 25 established and emerging artists to research, develop and mount work that explores lesser-known or under-acknowledged aspects of Port Arthur’s history, culture and environment. Port Arthur Project offers an extraordinary opportunity to create a landmark exhibition of work that will explore, challenge and embrace the complexity and richness of the site through the unique approach of contemporary visual artists. Nothing of this scale and nature has been undertaken in Tasmania before.


A total audience of over 20,000 is anticipated, based on PAHS’s position as the state’s most popular tourist attraction and the success of the special events associated with previous (performing arts) TDOTI projects at Port Arthur. While the site is a hugely popular destination, audiences will not have previously experienced such dramatically new ways of considering its characteristics.


Site-specificity and public art generally are rapidly developing elements within Tasmania’s visual arts. Their application to one of the country’s most significant and notable sites presents an opportunity to extend artists’ practice and audience understanding and enjoyment, while also providing timely recognition of the potential of art to contribute to the Tasmanian community’s acceptance of Port Arthur’s place in our culture. Through its commitment to consultation, Port Arthur Project will forge new relationships between the Peninsula community, artists and PAHS staff. And, through the symposium and publication of a book, the project will foster and expand research into one of Australia’s most significant historic sites.


The Port Arthur Project will be presented in the year following the 10th anniversary of the tragedy of April 1996, which has refocussed media and community attention on the site and region. The shootings impacted widely, affecting the immediate Port Arthur community very deeply. While the Port Arthur Project is not commemorative, those events, and the way in which they have affected the community, add poignancy to a project that, through art, considers the events that form our sense of community.


The focus of the exhibition is centred on the concept of revelation - the uncovering of under-recognised or over-looked elements of the PAHS and its environs, or the reinvestigation of conventional readings of history in new and unusual ways. Artists’ responses may be inspired by themes that include concealed histories, untold stories, imagined lives and spaces, architectural remains and physical traces in the natural world. The work will be exhibited within the grounds and historic buildings of the Port Arthur Historic Site in March/April as a feature of the 2007 Ten Days on the Island program.
Project Catalogue