The themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation are explored in Unsettling Queenstown, a new exhibition from co-creative director Associate Professor Ali Gumillya Baker.

Presented at the Australia Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Unsettling Queenstown will highlight Australia’s colonial inheritance at the end of the second Elizabethan era through the construct of ‘Queenstown’.

With Queenstowns all over the former British Empire, the exhibition treats Queenstown as an emblem of decolonial struggle the world over, and explores and questions the relations between people and the environment under the logics of colonialism and resource extraction, through the lens of a place in which these are brought into sharp focus.

Associate Professor Baker worked with co-Creative Directors Anthony Coupe, Julian Worrall, Emily Paech and Sarah Rhodes to curate the  multi-faceted and multi-sensory installation for the Pavilion, which will run from May 20 to November 26, 2023.

“The British Imperial hangover is pervasive in every corner of the globe: there is quite literally a Queenstown on every continent, bar Antarctica. Unsettling Queenstown unites decolonial theory and praxis, weaving elements from real places and gleanings from current architectural intelligence in search of ingredients to contribute to Venice’s Laboratory of the Future,” said the creative directors.

The heart of the exhibition is a colonial copper-mining town on the island of Lutruwita (Tasmania), with an additional Queenstown on Kaurna Yarta, kura Yarta Puulti (South Australia near Port Adelaide).

A ghostly fragment of colonial architecture is suspened at the centre of the Pavilion, accompanied by immersive sounds, voices and images, allowing the audience to weave through the exhibit, and imagining for themselves what the creative directors have prepared.

Throughout history, settler colonisation has involved an overwriting of Aboriginal Country, where British names and symbols are stamped upon Indigenous lands. Unsettling Queenstown will serve as an act of ‘demapping’, revealing the hidden histories of Country where colonies have been built.

For more information about Unsettling Queenstown, click here.

For more information about the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and to book tickets, click here.