"When I was young the North felt exotic. Being from the southern suburbs our family rarely ventured north, when we did it seemed like a journey, an adventure. Places like Wanneroo and Yanchep were faraway destinations, the freeway didn’t extend that far, and the trip took you through rural and natural bushland. We would take visiting relatives to experience the Australian landscape, the South just seemed like endless suburbs. There was a strong North -South divide too. I wanted to be from the North. You are always looking over your neighbour’s fence for something better.

Like a beacon in the distance was Atlantis Marine Park. It symbolised everything exciting to me about the North, it felt like the end of the world. Joondalup was in the process of being and planned by the government of the time. It existed in the purview of Wanneroo until 1998. Today when I think of the North my mind still flashes back to Atlantis. The North is more a set of fleeting perceptions and half-remembered nostalgia to an ‘outsider’ like me. And yet there is a general sense of connectedness to the North and its suburbs. The place feels so independent and defiant of Perth.

This work investigates the promise and optimism of the North, a drive for progress met with failure that I feel the story of Atlantis encapsulates. SunCity was a dream that many hoped would materialise, a dream of Bond and Burke and those who imagined beach suburbia, an expanding north-west corridor and a bustling satellite city to the north. Atlantis was the jewel in its crown and the inception of this dream. It never eventuated. After nine years the park closed and SunCity became derelict. A growing Perth needed a city to the north and Joondalup eventually took that mantle. This work investigates Joondalup’s success at the hands of SunCity’s failure. Joondalup came to symbolise the heart of the North.

Bleak landscapes, ruins and graffiti allude to those who invested and pushed for development, along with those who were its victims. Imagined graffiti reference dolphins that were unsuccessfully reintegrated after the park’s closure, a ghostly mark left on their former home. The titles reference a local interviewed who holds out hope for better days, remembering a time when this area held much promise.

To many ‘the North’ feels as one; even to this day, its boundaries divided as the northwest corridor expands. In many geographical senses it is connected. Bush and coastal heathland, circular and linear lakes sit atop a complicated system of subterranean cave networks extending from the Joondalup lakes to the coast in Yanchep. I draw on parallels between the topography of the North and that of Atlantis.

Limestone geography pervades the park, its’ landmarks carved from the very stone on which it sits. The caves of the area exist in another sense amongst these ruins. A motif within the work are dark obscured zones that draw you in, each has an entry point dragging you through and down."

- Artist's statement.

This artwork was purchased from the artist at the CIAA 2017.