Boats

Info

• Title : BOATS

• Year : 2024

• Medium : Multisensory installation comprising a commissioned gin, multichannel sound, curated dinners, and public interventions

• Duration : Variable.

Details

BOATS is a multisensory project exploring migration through taste, sound, and image. The work draws inspiration from Australia’s 2013 “Stop the Boats” campaign, transforming a language of deterrence into a poetic reflection on movement, belonging, and empathy.

Central to the project is a bespoke gin titled BOATS, commissioned for the work and produced in Tasmania using seventeen botanicals—seven from West Africa, including alligator pepper, calabash nutmeg, scent leaf, and aidan fruit, and ten from Australia, such as juniper, strawberry gum, kunzea, and kelp. Wrapped in paper printed with migration-related news excerpts and adorned with Nsịbịdị symbols for boats and water, the bottle functions as both object and narrative vessel.

Across Hobart, the project unfolded through billboards, culinary collaborations with chef Vince Trim, and a multichannel electroacoustic composition titled Matters Arising. The composition incorporates a parliamentary speech delivered at the Tasmania Parliament by John Kamara, the 2023 Tasmanian Australian of the Year.

Blending gin, sound, and storytelling, BOATS transforms consumption into connection—an embodied meditation on migration, identity, and the shared waters that both divide and unite us.

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