A tourist bus passes the base of the most underutilised dam in the world. It was birthed through the largest non-nuclear explosion in Australian history. One culture’s aspirations for food, wealth and home literally exploded, drowned and continues to displace another.

The exploration site of a granite mine is declared illegal. It is swiftly abandoned. Infrastructure left like rubbish. Despite overwhelming evidence, the government choose not to prosecute.

Over 100 million dollars of government money is spent building a bridge and road to what was meant to be the world’s largest prawn farm, but only ever existed as an idea…

Such is the delicate and absurd nexus of industry, government and colonial settler-life in the north-west of Australia where Alana Hunt has lived for the past 12 years.

A Very Clear Picture is an evolving body of work (accumulating since 2018) that examines colonial culture on Miriwoong and Gija Countries in the north-west of Australia, not as history, but as a continuum. The scene of a crime lies within the seemingly banal creases of settler daily life where dreams of development seed violence and legislative frameworks appear clean on paper but wreak havoc in the world.

Alana will inhabit the gallery space at Patan House as an open studio over the course of the festival—rousing conversation and exchange amidst a collection of images, printed matter, and a 2hr41m video detailing the project summaries of 967 applications to “destroy, damage or alter an Aboriginal site”. This video, produced in powerpoint has been exhaustively narrated without pause by Sam Walsh AO, former CEO of Rio Tinto.

Acknowledgements:

This is a long term and ongoing body of work, aspects of which have been supported over time by SPACED Rural Utopias program, the Kimberley Land Council, and a fellowship from Regional Arts Western Australia (2020-22).