Searching for Belvedere

Searching for Belvedere explores the submerged history of the Belvedere Arts Commune, an alternative community that occupied a site on the Leschenault Peninsula, north of Bunbury, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. 

Belvedere represents a significant chapter in the radical social history of late 20th-century Western Australia. The community brought together artists, craftspeople and countercultural individuals seeking ways of life outside the conventions of suburban Australia through alternative approaches to living and making. 

Bringing together artworks, photographs, archival material and artefacts from Belvedere, the exhibition traces both the material culture of the community and the memories of those who lived there. At its centre is a new video work in which former residents return to the Belvedere site, surveying a landscape transformed by time and recalling the places, people and experiences that formed the community. 

_{Image: Steve Freedman’s house, Belvedere, c 1970s. Photographer unknown.}