PEEL ISLAND
Moreton Bay
...quarantine station, asylum for inebriates and lazaret
PROJECT BACKGROUND - In 2008 Queensland Parks and Wildlife and Queensland College of Arts hosted 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, more commonly referred to as leprosy) have emerged in the artist's works (exhibited at the Tribune Street Gallery in March 2009), yet Peel Island also captivates imagination through it's raw, natural beauty. For me, the result of attending the residency culminated in several, experimental short films; the Tzaraath, Shadows and Refractions, Four Tribes, Aquarium, and Aquarium 2 - Cut Glass.
The haunting residue of human suffering and illness experienced by patients sent to live in the lazaret community of 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, created 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.
…“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.”
