This major project explores communication and bravery as elemental to resilience. In collaboration with her dad Greg Perejuan, an amateur aviator since he was 16, Perejuan-Capone built a 1:1 scale facsimile of his ultralight aircraft. The grand gesture is an examination of complicated personal histories, the aircraft symbolising critical points of disruption and connection in her family as well as an overarching drive for adventure that forms a basis for hope. Having not seen or flown in the plane since she was 17, the artist built engine and control components from memory or photographs in ceramics during a residency in Japan at the Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park, to unite with an accurate structural replica working with her father back in Australia over 6 months. Some parts are functional, other parts are wrong and useless in context, made of totally inappropriate materials; these are the grey areas representing fragmented legacy. The result is still evolving, to which Amy will continue to add, like a family quilt.

Amy Perejuan-Capone is an artist/designer living between the port town of Fremantle (WA) and various locations in the Arctic. She graduated with a BA(Fine Art) from Curtin University in 2009 and an Advanced Diploma of Industrial Design from North Metropolitan TAFE in 2014. Her work combines Amy’s fascination with extreme cold and shipping harbours with silversmithing, ceramics, watercolours, and temporary public performance. Her largest project to date is an ongoing site-specific public intervention entitled One Word For Snow, a fictional ‘snow advocacy/delivery agency’ that addresses Perth’s natural snowlessness by deploying short and absurdly localised blizzards.

Images courtesy of the artist

Supported by Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries; Fremantle Arts Centre; Midland Junction Arts Centre