ABOUT CASULA POWEROUSE

www.casulapowerhouse.com

Casula Powerhouse reopens this April, after a 13 million redevelopment. Set to become the flagship arts centre for Western Sydney, the Powerhouse boasts seven exhibition spaces, climate controlled galleries and storage for a 30,000 strong collection, and a 328-seat theatre.

The program is a dynamic blend of the best Australian art, theatre and performance, with Keating! Debuting in the theatre, and an exhibition of 14 internationally renowned contemporary artists filling the galleries.

From 5 April, the centre will be open seven days, 10 – 5.

Getting there:
From the city, jump on a Campbelltown train, and get off at Casula, one stop after Liverpool. If you’re driving, Casula Powerhouse is half an hour from the city on the M5.

Working Out West
by Brianna Munting

Acting Senior Curator at the Casula Powerhouse, Brianna Munting, reflects on the cultural and creative energy boiling in Western Sydney. Not from the area, but having worked there for several years, she debunks myths about the mysterious lands out past Strathfield.

What is it like being out west? It is not a place where violence is the norm, neither is it a daunting place to visit. It is not far, far away from Sydney CBD. It is not cultureless. It is not a concrete jungle of shopping malls and RSL’s and neither is it anonymous or unknown. The region is full of surprises that span the cultural, social and political, producing some of the most important creative contemporary work being made in Australia today.

Art and creative practice in the Western Suburbs spans disciplines, ideas and practices. It is facilitated through multifaceted organisations across the region, working with a multitude of remarkable artists. It is generated from many levels, beginning with communities, organisations, local governments and educational institutions. What sets it aside from the metropolitan scene is not only the space that it occupies both conceptually and physically but also the commitment and energy harvested from a young population. A population, which is striving to find a space for its own, voice and articulate the complex experience of cultural diversity.

The Western Suburbs and particularly Liverpool, is one of the fastest growing populations in NSW. It is also one of the youngest, with a younger average age of 32 years in comparison to Sydney of 35. It has a higher concentration of families and of larger households.

Western Sydney is also home to one of the most culturally diverse and complex populations. 55.5% of residents have been born overseas, with over 132 different languages spoken in the Liverpool Local Government region alone. This is perhaps one of the greatest assets of Western Sydney, which creates a unique space for creative practices and cultural centres in the region. Along with the rest of the country, Western Sydney is renegotiating its relationships in a post-Cronulla, post-Howard era. This question of cultural inequality has become increasingly important and deftly reflected in the arts being produced in the area: it shapes how we form relationships, create dialogues and interact.

The support, exploration and acknowledgement of cultural diversity are a defining characteristic of Western Sydney’s artistic culture. There is a sincerity and openness that occurs each time you are invited to enter the private spaces of artists and residents out here. There is an unspoken sense of support and a genuine search for mutual understanding that I have not encountered anywhere else in the world.

The question and contribution of complex cultures, of ideas and of experiences is something that is negotiated every day in Western Sydney. The major organisations in the region, such as Campbelltown Arts Centre, Blacktown Arts Centre, Penrith Regional Gallery and Lewers Bequest and the soon to be relaunched Casula Powerhouse, have all provided the space that the community needs to recognise and celebrate the ideas and artistic production that occurs outside the city centre.

The success of locally initiated and run projects has been widely recognised. Casula Powerhouse’s past programs such as Vietnam Voices, I Love Pho and Cybercultures have had a lasting effect on the local communities, building a beautiful network of artists that give back tenfold the support that they receive. Recent notable projects from neighbouring centres include Back to Black and News from the Islands at Campbelltown, Brook Andrew at Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest and Western Front at Blacktown.

The focus on community, on contemporary concerns and the personal as political frame the work of many of the regions artistic hubs. There are so many different kinds of stories here. This blatantly contradicts the stereotypes of the Westerns Suburbs as a concrete wasteland, a space of major highways and shopping malls deplete of critical cultural practices, or heaven forbid- a thinking population.

This April, the Casula Powerhouse reopens after a $13million redevelopment. The centre plays a key role in the cultural and creative networks of Western Sydney. The Powerhouse acts as a producer and entrepreneur, generating and welcoming new ideas, new works and curatorial and artistic models. In a refreshing dialogue, artistic programming reflects local and global concerns

Casula Powerhouse is an initiator of multidisciplinary programs that span both the visual and performing arts. It is a venue whose history is evident in each space, where the past industrial use of the Powerhouse is ever present. In some ways the building is a metaphor for current cultural dialogues, representing how we are moving onto a new future as a community with our eyes on the future but one foot firmly standing on where we come from.