Projects: Bootenal Light

My film and media practice has been broadly concerned with strange and unexplained phenomena. My first significant project dealing with this theme culminated in a series of exhibitions and an accompany documentary. The series and film, entitled “The Strange Light of Bootenal”, focused on a local phenomenon that appeared just outside the historic country town of Greenough, Western Australia. Interestingly, the local myth had pre-European roots as it was discovered that the “light story” was part of the region’s Aboriginal storytelling. From the mid 19th century until the 1970s the “Bootenal Light”, as it was called by the early settlers, was a yarn passed from one generation to the next. What made it so unique was that the eerie light would appear in a particular area of no more than 15 square miles around the Bootenal settlement. This ephemeral light was especially evocative for the settlers because it would signal a coming catastrophe, in the form of flood or fire, or even a violent death of one of the area’s residents. As a way to preserve this rich mythology, my film documented the last known people (all in their 80s) to have seen the Bootenal light. Because the rural environment is now full of an array of artificial light sources, the myth is slowly disappearing from the region’s folklore.

Photomontages from Fong Gallery 2000