Artist: Matthew Hunt
Work: Heliport Kellerberrin (2004)
Location: Kellerberrin, Western Australia
The environment that is now Kellerberrin has witnessed remarkable change, more recently the rapid and devastating effects of Anglo-Saxon colonisation. However, all things find their own balance and the ground that we walk on is now reclaiming itself through salination and the slow but inevitable by-products of occupation. This place has never been just a space: it has always been inhabited, always been located, maybe not through human occupation, white nor black, but through the things that live here, the living organisms which locate themselves here (or have done). Things have immigrated, re-located, created bio-borders and colonies. We as a species are also coming and going.
Heliport comments on this human migration and is suggestive of an emergency or crisis in preparation. The work contains ideas of departure and arrival, ideas of defection, ideas of rapid change, of rescue, of refuge, of disappearance. Heliport refuses didactic or singular readings but cannot help question what the economic and political reasons that create this human departure, and sometimes arrival, might be. It therefore mimics the layers of history that occupy the township and its surrounding environs. Heliport Kellerberrin explores these ideas and attempts to ensure it can simultaneously be read within wider global frameworks, reminding us that all spaces will eventually become transit zones.
