Australia's Venice Structure Biennale pavilion "questions the relics of the British Empire"

The Australia pavilion on the Venice Structure Biennale, which is completely revealed right here, encompasses a copper reconstruction of the Empire Resort in Queenstown.

Named Unsettling Queenstown, the pavilion goals to attract consideration to the legacy of colonialism and extraction by specializing in a number of settlements named Queenstown.

“The pavilion explores the idea of decolonisation, on each native and world scales,” curators Anthony Coupe, Ali Gumillya Baker, Julian Worrall, Emily Paech and Sarah Rhodes informed Dezeen.

“It seems at what architects are doing and may do to actively decolonise locations and areas, whereas reflecting on the historic legacies of colonialism and extractivism. It goals to each evoke feelings and interact the mind.”

The exhibition focuses on the legacies of two settlements – a copper-mining city named Queenstown in Tasmania and Queenstown in South Australia – that each ” bear the scars of colonisation and useful resource extraction”.

“Queenstown is a spot, however for the exhibition it is also a metaphor,” defined the curators. “We use the phrase Queenstown to confer with the construction of colonial and imperial relations all through Australia and internationally.

“It is also important that the Queen died final yr,” they continued. “On the finish of the second Elizabethan age, and the start of a brand new reign, the time feels proper to query the relics of the British Empire, and Australia’s place inside the Commonwealth.”

On the centre of the pavilion is a 70-per-cent-scale illustration of the belvedere Empire Resort in Queenstown, Tasmania, which was inbuilt the identical yr that Australia formally got here into existence.

The define of the construction was comprised of copper tubes, as a nod to the city’s position as a copper mine.

“A belvedere is an architectural construction constructed for taking a view and surveying a panorama – this serves an efficient illustration of the colonial method to taking possession of a territory, in addition to an emblem for our present second of retrospect and prospect,” defined the curators.

“Its arched kind is typical of the neo-classical language of the British colonial structure of the time, and so is each a deeply significant place for Queenstown Tasmania and emblematic of the best way colonial settlement fashioned a template stamped on the panorama of Australia and internationally.”

The curators created a sequence of visible and audiovisual displays within the Australian pavilion, which was designed by Australian studio Denton Corker Marshall and opened in 2015. The shows intention to show ways in which the impacts of colonisation and extraction will be mitigated.

“Queenstown’s existence was based mostly on extraction – as a copper mining settlement with manufacturing processes which have been extremely harmful to the surroundings, precipitating acidification, deforestation, and water air pollution,” the curators stated.

“The colonial exploitation of the surroundings that Queenstown represents additionally led to the genocidal destruction of pre-existing peoples and cultures,” they continued.

“Lots of the techniques we’re showcasing look to reverse this sample, restoring nature and reinstating indigenous relationships with the land.”

The exhibitions additionally goals to attract consideration to the position that mapping by the British had in overwriting the names of Indigenous lands.

“Cartography is a colonial instrument, for buying, representing, and manipulating data of areas and territories,” stated the curators. “It additionally has had the impact of erasing the data and spatial patterns of First Nations peoples.

“Demapping is what we’re calling the method of peeling again the layers of delineations and names which have been imposed upon locations, whereas forming new understandings and re-imaginings of Aboriginal data and worlds,” they continued.

The Australia pavilion is considered one of a number of that can be opened completely on Dezeen as we speak. Different pavilions that had been seen first on Dezeen embrace the Danish pavilion, the US pavilion, British pavilion and the Finnish pavilion that “declares the demise of the flushing bathroom”.

The pictures is by Tom Roe.

Dezeen is reside reporting from the Venice Structure Biennale, which takes place from 20 Might to 26 November 2023. See Dezeen Occasions Information for all the newest info it’s essential to know to attend the occasion, in addition to an inventory of different structure and design occasions going down all over the world.