These are pictures of my current Cockatoo Island Studio in the Sydney Harbour. The amazing Annie Laerkesen has set up these new studio spaces on the island. The building + the view is beautiful, a major juxtaposition to the dark past of the island.

A quick thrown together history:
Cockatoo Island is the largest island in the harbour. The name Wa-rea-mah was used by the local Indigenous people, pre-1788 you would find Sulfur-Crested Cockatoos (and Red Gums) on the island, hence the current name. Since this time it has been transformed into a harsh, eerie shell of the huge industrial estate it was home to between that past and now.

The island also housed a Penitentiary that was closed down in the late 60s due to poor conditions. At one stage their were 500 convicts housed in the overcrowded island barracks.

Frederick Ward was held at the prison until 1963 when his Indigenous lover broke him out and together they swam back to the mainland where he rode North-West NSW towards Uralla. Until 1870, when the police shot and killed him, he was known as the infamous bushranger, Thunderbolt . He is the only known escapee from Cockatoo Island Penitentiary.

The 70s saw the next unlucky island tenants, orphaned and neglected girls in the reformatory, set to work embroidering and sewing.

The island is also the site where the first modern war ship built in Australia. was built in 1912.

The island continues to be used for ship building and repair until 1992.

In 2000 during the time of the Olympics in Sydney Isabell Coe and about 10 Indigenous Activists set up a Tent Embassy Consulate on Cockatoo Island. At the time we were squatting at the Broadway Squats (http://squatspace.com/history/index.php)

“Ms COE says the Aborigines are claiming it under the term Terranullis, which means empty land, and which she says is the term under which the early Europeans settlers claimed Australia.” from: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-37250232.html

Since 2001 The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust has had control of the island and are trying to relaunch it as a site for cultural events. One of the biggest events so far was the 2008 Sydney Biennale.

So that’s a little overview of some bits and pieces to maybe give context to what I make out there in the studios…