PEEL
ISLAND
Moreton Bay
quarantine station,
asylum for inebriates,
leprosarium...
…“historically, Peel island was a holding tank, an experimental observation station for the socially dangerous. The emotional challenge for me was simply deciding whether to creatively read the environment as an occupant or observer.”
PROJECT BACKGROUND - Queensland Parks and Wildlife and Queensland College of Arts recently commenced a collaborative, experiential arts project, placing a small group of postgraduate visual artists on the historic Peel Island to reflect, research and respond to the environment.
Many fascinating features of the Island's checkered history (including it's quarantine station, sanitorium for inebriates, and the Lazaret for the patients suffering Hansen's Disease) have emerged in the artist's works due for exhibition and catalogue in March 2009, yet Peel Island also captivates imagination through it's raw, natural beauty.
“The haunting residue of human suffering and illness experienced by patients sent to live in the lazaret community on Peel Island remains utterly palpable, frozen in the dilapidation.... The abandoned buildings of the historic lazaret, the collapsing shells that housed people rejected by the mainland, creates a potent symbol of social abhorrence, a standard of ignorance and prejudice, and I recognised it as a profound theatre-space for my own healing and inner reflection.
