About the Event
Developed through a year-long residency at Albany’s Historic Whaling Station, Erin Coates’ The Boneyard examined the intertwined histories of people, animals and commercial whaling in Western Australia. Drawing on the artist’s family’s history as shell divers, the exhibition responded to the station’s archives and the submerged whale-bone deposits left by the industry. Through graphite drawings, sculpture, underwater film and large-scale suspended installations, Coates explored memory, extinction and regeneration. Works displayed in the gallery and beneath the flensing deck created a haunting reflection on family history, natural history and the physical traces of whaling.
