Fremantle Biennale

HYPER-LIMINAL

Time travel is a proposition that movement between points in time resembles movement between points in space. Temporal and spatial aspects of place are explored in a sound installation by composer, Ryan Burge and visual artist, Jenn Garland. The husband and wife duo present their site-responsive installation in the Shipwreck Museum’s Storehouse Gallery within the historic former Commissariat Building that was pivotal in the State’s early growth.

The installation explores defining moments in Fremantle’s post-settlement history by considering periods of increased activity through Gage Roads - the deepwater sea channel used as a shipping lane and anchorage. During key times it has become a site of international interest, such as the: Gold rush of the 1890s when Fremantle became the ‘Gateway to the West’; naval operations during WWII; and defence of the America’s Cup yacht race in 1987. A conflicted space of commerce, war and recreation, Gage Roads is an interface with the outside world. International attention is once again on this space - but now through the web-based vessel tracking and surveillance systems of global trade.

Signs and symbols from these different times are layered together using found and archival materials, field recordings, and digital synthesis. Exploring the aesthetic of a cultural identity innately connected to Gage Roads, the gallery becomes an audio-visual hyperreal space of pastiche, simulation and abstacted cultural artefact, evoking notions of history and the future.