CityCat Project
The Los Angeles artist Dave Hullfish Bailey has said that “if there's a one-liner about what my [site-based projects] attempt, it has to do with replacing an iconographic vision of place with an inhabited, on-the-ground geography” (Artext, No. 76, 2002). Bailey's collaborative CityCat Project enables us to think this ambition via an unfolding ecology of relations between producers and audiences, histories and locations, aesthetic decisions and political effects.
An ongoing collaboration between Bailey and the Brisbane Aboriginal leader Sam Watson, the CityCat Project was initiated in 2003, when Bailey was commissioned to develop a public project for Brisbane. The artist's response led him to invite Watson, who is an accomplished playwright and outspoken political activist, to site and choreograph unannounced interruptions to the routine routing of Brisbane’s popular CityCat ferries. Since the late 1990s these highly visible craft have played a key role in the redevelopment of the Brisbane River as a civic and touristic amenity.
While the momentary diversion of the CityCat ferries constitutes its central element, the project has activated multiple forms, contexts and audiences, and includes drawings, photographic, video and sculptural works, collages, field recordings, exhibitions, architectural interventions, public discussions, slide-lectures, and publications. Characterised by this proliferation and confusion of spaces, information and agency, its radically collaborative yet authorially fragmented process assumes its participants may not share common knowledges, aesthetic languages, nor political aims.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the CityCat Project has been Watson's public declaration that the river performance is a contemporary manifestation of the Dreaming that will be told, re-told, and re-enacted indefinitely into the future. Announced in the immediate aftermath of the first iteration of the river performance in December 2006, in May 2009 it was enacted for a second time, while its third iteration and new activities in Morton Bay and on North Stradbroke Island are currently being planned.
Aspects of the CityCat Project have been presented at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2003); Turrbal-Jagera: The University of Queensland Art Projects 2006, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane (2006); Lyon Biennial (2007); Spaces of Art conference, Art Gallery of New South Wales/Artspace, Sydney (2009); Pestorius Sweeney House (2009); State Library of Queensland, Brisbane (2009); Cité International des Arts, Paris (2010); Zobernig Class, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2010); AAANZ Conference, Adelaide (2010), and the Auckland Art Fair (2011).
David Pestorius is the curator of the CityCat Project and since 2003 he has worked closely with Bailey and Watson on all aspects of the project.
The CityCat Project is undertaken with the knowledge, consultation and support of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, the traditional custodians of the Brisbane River, its foreshores, and adjacent country; while the co-operation of the Nunuccal people of North Stradbroke Island, who Watson also has close blood-ties to, is currently being negotiated.
The CityCat Project relies on the co-operation and support of industry partners, the Brisbane City Council and TransdevTSL Brisbane Ferries, and would not be possible without the generous support of sponsors, including Arts Queensland, The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, State Library of Queensland, Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, The Printing Office, Donovan Hill architects, Ablatio Quarry, and the Auckland Art Fair.
Published writings on the CityCat Project:
Catherine Chevalier, 'Dave Hullfish Bailey, Queensland University, Brisbane, December 2006', Frog, No. 5, Paris, 2007, pp. 96–99
Rex Butler, 'Dave Hullfish Bailey', Artforum International, XLVIII, No. 1, New York, 2009, p. 314
David Pestorius, 'Dada in the post-colonial field: Dave Hullfish Bailey's CityCat Project for Brisbane', Column 4, Artspace Contemporary Art Centre, Sydney, 2009, pp. 79–84
