Strangers on the Shore

WAM WARDANUP – Strangers on the Shore is an exhibition about cross-cultural encounters along the arc of Western Australian’s coastline. It follows narrative threads that run from the 1600’s onwards, looking at early encounters between First Nations peoples and Macassan and Chinese traders and European shipwreck survivors.

Invited artists respond to the WA Maritime Museum archival collection of the same name. This archive is ‘an electronic database containing all known European and Asian shipwrecks around Western Australia’s coastline where survivors have had Indigenous social contact.’Through interrogating this archive and the many stories of shipwreck, survival and cross-cultural encounter, the artists engage in a critique of colonialism, shine a light onto and question accepted histories, acknowledge truths and imagine other possibilities.

Accross a diversity of media, works of invited artists are placed in conversation with significant works from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, Mossenson Gallery and artefacts from the Western Australian Maritime Museum.

This exhibition asks that we re-visit accepted histories and try to better understand shared moments of our collective past that propel myth and shape our sense of cultural identity.

Artists

Kelsey Ashe with Sandra Harben, Johnny Bulun Bulun, Sandra Hill, Jo Darbyshire with Cherish Marrington and David Cherrin, Laurel Nannup, Anna Nazzari, Lea Taylor and Michael Jalaru Torres. With thanks to Mossenson Gallery for the loan of artwork and WA Maritime Museum for the loan of artefacts.

To be officially opened by Janet Holmes à Court AC

With opening ceremony and welcome by Sandra Harben