Force Field / Julie Gough
We stand around a drainage hole in a concreted carpark, stop one on Julie Gough’s psychogeographic walking tour, part of her solo exhibition, Force Field. Graffiti decorates the surrounding shipping containers and warehouse walls. Visually it’s unremarkable – it could be in any inner-city block, anywhere. Yet, unknown to most, this drainage hole in inner-city Nipaluna/Hobart was once a place of cultural and ecological significance, a meeting place known as the “Pool of the Aborigines”. As the Trawlwoolway artist notes, the waterhole and camp site was used by Aboriginal people until it was destroyed by colonists by the 1840s.
