EXHIBITION 12 SEPT – 25 OCT

Join us for our IOTA exhibition Listening Geographies, Portraits of Mirage Country an immersive show featuring cross-disciplinary installations by three talented artists from the Indian Ocean rim: Amelia Blanco, a Port Hedland local whose work reflects her family’s multi-generational migration and cultural adaptation; Kate Alida Mullen, blending traditional and modern storytelling to create a multi-sensory portrait of place; and Andrea Vinkovic, who is inspired by fragility, organic beauty and the delicate balance of the natural environment.

This ancient delta, known as mirage country, has long been a significant gathering place for the Kariyarra people and is now one of the world’s largest iron ore exportation ports.

Telling tactile, luminous, and sonic stories of the land and waterways of Marapikurrinya Yintha (Port Hedland), these artists uncover the hidden narratives of this unique region, spanning its deep ecological histories to its modern industrial and multicultural realities. The local community also engaged in this exploration through workshops and residency programs, contributing to the exhibition’s installation. Find out more below.

Amelia Blanco

Amelia Blanco is a multidisciplinary emerging artist based in Port Hedland, Western Australia with a Cocos-Malay heritage.

Blanco perceives both the opportunity and the limitations that exist for young people. Blanco overcame these barriers by perusing education and work on other places and has chosen to return to Port Hedland to be with her multigenerational family. She takes from her three simultaneous careers in videography and photography, lighting design for events and a mechanic. She enjoys drawing on all three skill sets in her art, mostly focusing on movement, light and shadow.

In 2022, Blanco was featured in a group exhibition at the Courthouse Gallery+Studio, Port Hedland, as part of sate-wide Open Borders project. In 2023, she was invited to exhibit and present an artist talk at John Curtin Gallery, Perth, for the Open Borders Regional Art Triennial Survey exhibition.

Kate Mullen

Kate Alida Mullen is an artist based in Southwest Western Australia. Mullen’s multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, installation, performance, textiles, printmaking, sound and film to document relational, temporal enquiries into the subtle, layered histories of places. Mullen’s site-specific responses engage a methodology of deep listening as mode for navigating colonised space.

Mullen graduated from the University of Western Australia with First Class Honours in Fine Arts and is completing a creative practice-led PhD through La Trobe University (Vic).

Recent projects include: Open Borders Regional Arts Triennial, 2023, John Curtin Gallery (WA); Storm the Gods and Shake the Universe, 2023, FORM Gallery (WA); Emergences, 2023, Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix (WA); Can Serrat International Art Residency, 2022, Spain; solo exhibition Its Sighs Become Yours, 2022, The Farm Margaret River (WA); Erased Drawings (Studies for Grieving Ritual), 2019, Dark Mofo (Tas); Thinking Rooms for Enacting Knowledges, 2019, Deakin University (Vic).

As longstanding forms of craft adapt to the evolving technological age, sound has become a medium that, like cloth and thread, may be gathered, processed, manipulated, and woven to convey vast layers of meaning and impressions of place.