Kitschgroteseque - Ian Hance exhibition
I have never visited the Darwin harbour underground WWII oil storage tunnels before, it being one of those non-wheelchair accessible tourist activities we tend to ignore as a family. However with the added incentive of an exhibition my curiosity won out and so began an girls day out adventure.
We walk quickly down the narrow entry tunnel over dank water puddled beneath old cracked mats to save tourists feet, to be greeted by the monster of the deep. Then left and out into the relative open of an empty oil tank. Information board after information board are mostly ignored until there THEY are.
Termite mounds seem to rise from the concrete and iron lined tunnels, clad in an assortment of (often darkly humorous) outfits. Compositions are portrait-like and personalties emerge with a strange brand of anonymity.
Large rotary fans whirr and stir the rank humid air, the breeze created stirs the hanging dimly lit canvases, furthering the sense of animation. A recorded voice pierces through the whirring from one of those information boards, enhancing a sense of dislocation.
Thinned enamel paint has been left to drip down the surface of the canvas echoing the water dripping down the tunnel sides to pool at our feet. Luminous bush fires glow from the darkest depths of the tunnel.
