Drawing Lines in the Sand

Overview

The last time Cockatoo Island’s gritty industrial spaces were transformed it was by Outpost, a street art explosion of graffiti, paste-ups and sticker art from more than 150 artists across the world. A few of the exhibits still remain, but in February the island will see its topography permeated with installations exploring the territory in a uniquely Australian context.

Drawing Lines in the Sand is compromised of six projects engaging with Cockatoo Island as both a symbolic space and a physical one, delving (literally) into its history as a former imperial prison, industrial school, reformatory and gaol. Tunneling under convict-quarried shafts, journeying into the salt-encrusted tunnels of a 17^th-century salt mine and filling abandoned storage spaces with a maze of scaffolding plated in 24 karat told, all idiosyncratic installations are connected through a reflection on conditions of interiority and exteriority particular to the Island Continent.

Examining the legacy of “the Western colonialist tropism of island territories as condensed sites of acquisition, containment and control,” it’ll also give you something to think about next time you’re lounging in the sun sipping a cold beer from The Island Bar.