Ahead of Queenstown’s third arts festival, I spoke to
founding director and 5th generation Queenstowner, Travis Tiddy,
about the festival’s development, his own involvement, and the name change from
The Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival
to the more ambiguous The Unconformity.
Queenstown and Mt Owen at sundown. © Lucy Hawthorne |
LH: How did the
festival start?
TT: It started initially in 2009. [I was part of an]
organisation called ‘Project Queenstown’ – a local tourism organisation that’s
existed for 25 years. We put out a
municipal survey to ask local people where thought the direction of the town
was going, or where it should be going.
The survey told us people wanted a festival. So we took on the challenge of developing a
cultural festival for Queenstown with a mandate from local research. There was a gap and a need.
LH: The first two iterations
were called The Queenstown Heritage and Arts
Festival. Tell me about this original name.
TT: When we started there was a bit of momentum and energy
around Raymond Arnold and what he was creating in Queenstown with many visiting
international and national well-known artists. He had a rigorous artistic
program, and so we wanted to capture that and build upon it.
We had no experience in event management when we
started. We built these skills from the
ground up. So The Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival was a very literal
title. In a way it was incongruous at
the time. It was self-referential in the absurdity of having an arts festival
in Queenstown - a regional backwater on the fringes of cultural activity in the
state.
LH: At the first
festival, I noticed that there was a really broad spectrum of activities, from
more traditional and conservative celebrations of cultural heritage to
cutting-edge contemporary art.
TT: Previous programs have represented our diverse
audience. The festival has been a very
strong home coming event [for] people who have had a very strong connection
with the region. The festival is an
opportunity to reconnect. We have historically
had an older audience - a heritage-loving audience - who use it as an
opportunity to connect to the place. So
we have a broad program [that appeals to this older audience] and also captures
the interest of the contemporary art community.
There’s an incredible amount of goodwill and interest in the
West Coast and Queenstown. We have to
remember that the region was really booming only decades ago. There was a point
in time where Zeehan was supposed to be the capital of the state. Earlier than that in The Depression, the West
Coast was firing all cylinders while the rest of the state was really hurting. In 1902, Mt Lyall company’s gross turnover
was greater than the state government’s so we’re talking about a region that’s pivotal
in the formation of the state, and illustrious on a national and international
scale from a mining perspective. It means that as the mining industry has
become more subdued, as people have moved away, there are still these fundamental
connections that people still have to the region. There’s still a memory or emotional
response. So our audience is made up of
all those people.
View of the famous gravel footy oval from the Spion Kopf Lookout, Queenstown. © Lucy Hawthorne |
LH: Where does the
name The Unconformity come from?
TT: Personally, I think that at the 7-year mark it’s almost
at a renewal phase for any organisation. It’s the fatigue point from a staffing
point of view and from a brand point of view, but maybe also artistically. So
we thought it was time to refresh the organisation. When we looked at where we wanted to head
with the festival, where artistically where we think it should be based, it
came back to the geological story because it sort of unifies. It’s the reason
why we’re still there. It unifies the mining story. It brings the natural
landscape - the surrounding heritage wilderness - into the story. It also lets us talk about the hydroelectric
industry, which is really important to us as well. So on a number of levels, the geological
story gives us a lot to work with. When
doing research into the local geology, we came across this local rock form: the
Haulage Unconformity.
LH: So it’s actually a
rock form?
TT: Yes, you’ve probably seen it on our posters - a detail of the rock face. It’s an exposed wall of rock at the Mt Lyall
mining field. It represents the touching point of three geological agents.
It’s a really dynamic representation of local geology. It
tells the story of why there are so many minerals on the West Coast. It has a
sense of immeasurable force - forces that are in opposition but coexist. So artistically,
when we were thinking of this feature as a thematic basis for the event we
realised that the Unconformity speaks about the people… people with a very keen
sense of identity… an isolated community
that essentially does things its own way and in its way doesn’t conform. We had a lightbulb moment. Not only does it speak about industry, it also
speaks about the people and is something of a statement about where we live and
how we live.
LH: Queenstown is
such a unique place visually, particularly the contrast between the world
heritage area and the landscape immediately surrounding Queenstown. Its social
history is so interesting too – it’s a tale of changing fortunes.
TT: There’s quite a tragic narrative to the place. When we
held the last festival [in 2014], only 10 months earlier we had devastating
news that there had been multiple fatalities underground in the local mine. It
rippled through the entire community. It really impacted everybody. Six months
later, the mine temporarily closed. In that
context, we decided to make the entire festival free. We also changed our
opening ceremony to feature a sculpture called The Angel of the West, a
symbolic feature of ‘let’s get through this’. However, during the opening
ceremony it caught on fire…
LH: That wasn’t
deliberate?
TT: It wasn’t deliberate.
We were disappointed by the outcome but afterwards as we were reviewing
it, we thought the idea of a community creating a symbolic five-meter tall angel
and yet her face burns off… it sort of fits with the tragic narrative. I was
doing the speech at the time so I quickly changed the speech to make it seem
like it was intentional with a few references to the phoenix coming from the
ashes and that sort of thing.
At the moment there’s a lot of interest in the fringes.
There’s a lot of interest in authenticity, in stories and connections within
regional settings and I think artistically we can see a bit of a move in that
direction. We recognise the world is
coming to Queenstown.
The Unconformity,
Queenstown, Tasmania. 14-16 October, 2016.
Visit theunconformity.com.au for program information and
ticketing.
This interview was originally published in Warp Magazine, October 2016.