Looking Forward, Looking Back
Inspired by portraits from the Museum of the Goldfield's historic Dwyer & MacKay Photographic Collection, a collective of Western Australia's leading poets and writers re-imagine Kalgoorlie-Boulder's rich history through a series of poems and prose, vibrantly bringing the twin cities' past to life.
Set under the museum’s towering Ivanhoe headframe, against a revolving backdrop of vintage photographic portraits, Looking Forward, Looking Back is an evening of ekphrastic poetry composed and recited by some of Western Australia’s finest established and emerging poets and writers.
Presented by the Museum of the Goldfields and Art On The Move as part of the Activating Collections Artist-in-Residence program, the featured poems and prose were composed in response to portraits selected from the museum’s holdings by current Artist-in-Residence, Brett Leigh Dicks.
Dating back to the late 1800s, the Dwyer & MacKay Photographic Collection includes almost 10,000 photographs that span five decades of Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s rich and vibrant history.
The evening is curated by award-winning poet Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon and features work that re-imagine the lives of Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s founders as they forged a thriving city from the red dust of Western Australia’s remote Eastern Goldfields.