“Rockpools”
Katie West
5 July → 30 Aug 2025
Gallery

A large brown and cream striped shell sits amongst a collection of various native flowers and leaves in front of a vibrant red background. Some petals and leaves lie on the surface surrounding the shell.
Katie West, 'A shell for you, Wuggi', 2025, archival print.

West Space premieres Rockpools, a new exhibition by Yindjibarndi artist Katie West.

Rockpools dwells with the stories of three generations of West's grandmothers – Wuggi, Sheila and Shirley – and the entanglement of their lives and legacies with colonial expansion in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Supported by a 2024 National Regional Arts Fellowship, West travelled to places of significance to her family. The town of Onslow, its neglected cemetery, Millstream Station, and Murujuga, a place of high cultural importance that is home to the oldest rock art and bacterial life forms on the planet.

Rockpools comprises the detritus of colonisation – metal objects scavenged from the tip shops in Karratha on Ngarluma Ngurra (Country) and closer to West's home in Noongar Ballardong Boodja (Country). These objects carry the story of mining and resource extraction from Ngurra, particularly that of iron ore, and the resulting destruction of land and water flows. Arranged as rockpools, they reflect those of the coast revealed at low tide, those inland reserved for women to welcome their babies, and aquifers below ground fed by millennia of rainfall. The rockpools in the gallery, frequented by radios and bailer shells (Melo amphora), transmit a composition that includes hydrophone recordings collected at Onslow and Point Samson, as well as the resonant frequencies of bailer shells – vessels used by ancestors to carry and drink water, or more recently, to mark the graves of loved ones.

Rockpools holds multiple shifting stories, times, and places. At this moment, government support for expanding natural gas extraction, as well as the current construction of a fertiliser plant on the Burrup Peninsula, undermines the long campaign for Murujuga to gain UNESCO World Heritage status. These industries have damaged and continue to disturb Murujuga's living cultural landscape, which contains an estimated 2 million petroglyphs and evidence of 50,000 years of continuous cultural knowledge. This exhibition honours Yaburara, Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo Elders and Custodians who protect and maintain the Lore and Ngurra, for all time.

Katie West: Rockpools is a West Space Commission supported by Regional Arts Australia and the Government of Western Australia through the Department of Creative Industries.

Programs

Opening Celebration, Sat 5 July, 4 → 6pm

Rockpools launches as part of NAIDOC Week, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision, Legacy. Our gratitude to Colin Hunter Jr Jr for joining us.

In Conversation, Sat 12 July, 11am → 12pm

Katie West speaks with Michael Gentle, Nyoongar man and Curator, Australian and First Nations Art, National Gallery of Victoria. Read highlights from this conversation on our digital publishing platform, West Space Offsite.

A shot of the four sculptural installation pieces sits on the gallery floor. They are comprised of metal, radios, wire frame and shells. In the background is a framed photography piece of flowers resting on another shell.
Three of the sculptural installation pieces sit on the gallery floor comprised of metal poles and radios, in the background three framed photography pieces hang from the walls of flowers resting on shells.
Sculptural installation piece comprised of metal poles, a brown shell, wire frame and a radio sits on the warm floorboards of the gallery.
Detail shot of sculptural piece of rusting frame, brown and white shell and the edge of the radio.
A detail image of three different metal frames intersecting, with a large baler shell sitting on top of the structure
Sculptural installation piece made of metal frames, a large shell, radio and wire sits on the warm floorboards of the gallery.
A detail shot of a radio on metal hooks with a shell resting on top.
Sculptural installation piece comprised of metal two shells and a radio sits on the warm floorboards of the gallery.
A detail shot of a brown and white patterned shell sitting between a neon pole and a yellow rusting pole
Two gallery visitors are bent down listening to a radio on the floor attached to a metal pole. A second sculptural install is in the forefront, containing metal, wood and a shell.
A portrait of Katie West in a suede silver long sleeve top and light wash jeans in front of a framed photography piece. The photograph shows a shell and flowers on a vibrant background.

Katie West is an artist and Yindjibarndi woman based in Noongar Ballardong Country. Her practice is grounded in the understanding that the health of human society and Ngurra (Country) mirror one another. Through installations of found objects and sound transmitted via radios, textiles, video and photography, Katie’s works invite attention to the ways we weave our stories, places, histories, and futures.

Related

A large cream and white shell sits under a bunch of various native flower, of different shapes and colours, in front of a vibrant red background. Petals lie on the surface surrounding the shell.

Fayen d'Evie, Rockpools
2025

Katie West, calico dyed with wandoo bark
2020