Inside Australia

Jun 24

Notes from Hugh

The first time I met Antony Gormley, in London in 2002, he asked me to spend time with him in western Australia. He had begun work on his sculpture installation on Lake Ballard, a large salt-lake near the town of Menzies, some 800 kilometres east of Perth.

But, as the project got under way, Antony had become ever more aware of the historical and anthropological complexities of the place he had chosen. Far from being the blank canvas evoked by the white expanses of a salt-lake, this was a landscape that had been occupied by Aboriginal societies since time immemorial and in colonial times, by a succession of frontier developments. Thus it was that the shorelines and outback around Lake Ballard were claimed, and to some extent shaped, by gold mining, cattle ranching and small town boom-and-bust history, while the Wangkatha speaking elders embraced it all as theirs within Dream-Time narratives that they shared with us. And they explained to us that the Aboriginal population of the Menzies area comprised several distinct groups, sharing the language but identifying themselves as Ngurlutjarra, Ngaanyatjarra, Bindinni, and Tjalkatjarra. Moreover, some of these groups were working on separate and to some extent rival land claims. This intricate web of society and cultures informed everything we encountered and though we could never do justice to such complexity, in due course it shaped the film we made.

Antony and I camped on the edges of the lake, and spent time meeting with the people of Menzies. We listened to their stories and learned their histories as well as we could. After Antony left, I stayed on longer, reaching further into both Aboriginal and white settler ideas about both the land around them and the plan for the sculptures on the surface of the lake itself. This led to the film, which travels the journeys we were shown as well as the creation of the extraordinary installation. Some filming of this had already been done by an Australian crew, with Jody Nunn producing and Ian Batt on camera. We joined forces, in a production supported by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and Channel 5 TV in the UK. It was an exhilarating project for us all - the Gormley sculptures emerged and were located on the lake, and the rival views of the land were revealed to us. All aspects of this were disturbing and yet, in the end, I found that the film bore witness to something of astonishing and powerful beauty.

Documents

Inside Australia - Distributor’s Notes PDF →
Inside Lake Ballard - Hugh Brody PDF→

Synopsis

On a vast salt lake surrounded by red earth, renowned British sculptor Antony Gormley embarks on a sculptural installation that awakens a small Goldfields town in remote Western Australia.

Near the tiny outback town of Menzies, 650 kms from Perth, Western Australia, lays the vast Lake Ballard. This timeless place has become home to Gormley’s most ambitious work to date, Inside Australia. Fifty-one sculptures stand silently in the hot desert wind, capturing a moment in time. The installation celebrates Menzies - a community that has taken this journey with an artist willing to break the mould of tradition. It also celebrates an extraordinary place.

The sculptural installation Inside Australia was commissioned by the 2003 Perth International Arts Festival.

Research: 2001

Filmed: 2001-2

First screened: 2002

Where to find this film:

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