It wasn’t just Preface and The House of Floating Flowers in Townsville last month. In a city of a little over 200,000 people, the Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts’ biennial known as PUNQ transformed a host of locations with installations, exhibitions and other intriguing events.
One of the highlights was Kellie O’Dempsey’s Caretaker. For anyone who has ever tended to an elderly relative, child or invalid… well, let’s start that again. For any woman who has ever tended to any of the aforementioned, the site-specific installation would have struck a chord.
The works in this series were placed in the same venue where Zane Saunders gave us Preface – an old bank building. But where Saunders’ installation and performance were front and centre in the space, O’Dempsey’s pieces were, fittingly, to be found in a couple of back rooms, hidden away.
PUNQ review – quick links
Caretaker
O’Dempsey’s exhibition was down a side alley, easily missed if you didn’t know where to look. Comprising video, projection, collage and sound, Caretaker was a cinematic response to the unsung and often unseen work of the women who care for others.
In the first room, a looped film centred on the repetitive nature of such tasks, showing a woman trudging up and down stairs, over and over again. There was a stair lift, but she wasn’t engaging with it, except to move its arms or use it to carry things for her.
Sometimes she had a bucket, sometimes a cloth, or a box of tissues. At the top of the stairs, a cane rested, and off to the right, we could see through to a dimly lit bedroom. Was there still someone in there? Were they calling for her to come and nurse them or were they simply lying there quietly, ready to be ministered to? Could it even be that they had recently died and she was cleaning out the room to prepare it for reuse?
Or was this, more likely, merely a slow and deliberate evocation of the relentless, almost ritualistic routine of caring for someone, day in day out?
In the next room, an enlarged projection showed a flexing arm, lit with a glow that was almost halo-like. Hands that work can also beckon, it seemed to be implying.
Deep in a jagged hole in the wall was another much smaller projection of the same woman (it appeared), wiping and toiling, suited but barefoot. The work of a carer continues, frequently woven around other responsibilities, such as paying jobs and family life. But it’s this invisible labour that builds the foundations that bind communities together.
Pressure Systems
Nearby, in the cavernous main hall of the former Townsville Transit Centre, Yandell Walton and Jana Irmert installed a hypnotic and genuinely engrossing sound and visual work responding to longwall mining in the Garden of Stones State Conservation Area.
Pressure Systems featured 3D models created using photogrammetry of sandstone formations, as well as moving images driven by data sets of the total amount of coal extracted from four different mines in this location. Finally, there was a digital clock, counting down.
Irmert’s soundscape was created on analog synthesisers and prompted by her memories of visiting one of the mines with a geophone – an experience that left the sounds of excavation etched into her mind. The resulting sound bath in Pressure Systems pulsed and crescendoed in a sinister, at times overwhelming, fashion.
Surrounded by dangling silver insulation tubes and vibrant red window coverings, and set in a space that is no longer in use but retains a shadow of its former life, the installation was particularly potent. And ominous.
Dance Brolga Dance
In a notable contrast to the somewhat menacing existential threat of Pressure Systems, Dance Brolga Dance was a throwback to a different and perhaps gentler time.
At first sight, Mundy Creek may seem like a fairly innocuous stretch of country. The tidal wetland and urban waterway was once a string of waterholes, before they disappeared and were replaced by a manmade creek in the 1960s. In recent years, volunteers – particularly local community stalwart and artist Bernadette ‘Berna’ Boscacci – have performed miracles, restoring and regenerating the creek.
As a leading light of the Mundy Creek Artists Collective, Boscacci was also involved in putting together the audio tour, Dance Brolga Dance, in which a group of Elders, including Alanna Doolan, reminisce about what the area was like in bygone years.
There’s much talk of fireflies, mango seasons and, especially, the brolgas that would visit – when the young folk would exhort them to dance.
PUNQ 2026 has now finished, but you can still listen to the Mundy Creek audio tour, which is a delightful way to be immersed into a soundscape of bird sounds and warm voices, sharing their history. The wrap-up is grand too: ‘Thanks for the yarn, Uncle.’ ‘You going then?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, go on then.’
The PUNQ arts festival, produced by Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, ran from 23 September to 11 October 2026 in Gurambilbarra/Townsville and across North Queensland.
The writer visited Townsville as a guest of Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts.
