Mining the benefits of arts for mental health

How do you get a bunch of miners to talk about mental health? Bring in an artist.
[This is archived content and may not display in the originally intended format.]

BE-LONGING-S Busselton, a digital projection Artist Craig Walsh with the Busselton community, 2013. Image courtesy FIVE. 

In the heat and dust of Paraburdoo, a regional mining town some 1,536 kilometres north of Perth, tradies and miners are using public art to strike up a conversation around mental health.

Locals have worked with installation artist Alex Mickle since August last year to create Resilience, a large scale sculpture which symbolises the ruggedness of the landscape – among a diverse range of other art commissions – and quite literally promotes the resilience of a community challenged by a fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) work dynamic.

Unlock Padlock Icon

Unlock this content?

Access this content and more

Troy Nankervis
About the Author
Troy Nankervis is an ArtsHub journalist from Melbourne. Follow him on twitter @troynankervis