Growing up on the NSW south coast, swimming was part of Penrith Regional Gallery director Toby Chapman’s daily life.
“I’ve had a personal love and attachment to pools since I was a child,” he tells ABC Arts.
As an adult, he began to recognize the valuable role of municipal pools as civic spaces that serve different aspects of society.
“We have young people and children taking swimming lessons, and we may have older people coming as well,” he says.
“People of all ages and walks of life come together in the same pool.”
Public pools are “a really interesting mix of all areas of the community you live in,” Chapman says. (Photo: Penrith Pool in the 1960s) (Supply: PRG)
However, moving to Western Sydney made it difficult to understand the pool as a democratic space.
“It was a stinky, hot day in Penrith, over 40 degrees, I think it was January or February, and I decided to go for a swim at the local pool after work,” he says.
A quick search online revealed, to my surprise, that Penrith, a city of 225,000 people, only has two public pools.
“i got you [it] “It was really shocking that this is one of the hottest places in all of Sydney and there is so little public swimming and access to water,” he says.
The realization that this pool was not available to everyone sparked Chapman’s curatorial interest.
“I thought the idea of an exhibition about Australia’s interest in swimming could be a way to look at the history of our society,” he says.
“Planning and developing the show in Penrith was also an opportunity to highlight the realities of communities living in Western Sydney, where, spoiler alert, we found that access to swimmable water is not equal for everyone.”
The result is Penrith Regional Gallery’s summer blockbuster ‘The Pool Show’, which examines Australian life through the lens of our fascination with pools.
Artist David Capra collaborated with a senior aquabics class to create a ‘mini-musical’, ‘Birthing Things in the Spirit: The Waterbirth’, filmed at Campbelltown Aquatic Centre. (Provided by: PRG/David Capra)
The liberation of learning to swim
As a starting point, Penrith Regional Gallery asked its exhibition partner, the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), for the loan of a series of major works, including David Hockney’s Water in the Swimming Pool Santa Monica (1964) and Ian Fairweather’s The Pool (1959).
However, while the AGNSW collection provided a rich visual archive of Australian swimming history, it had limitations.
”[As] We looked at their collection and realized that not every body and every person was represented in the story,” Chapman says.
“The representation of swimmers was largely monocultural. It was very representative of white Australia.”
Mr Chapman said photographs such as Max Dupin’s Olympic Pool (Diver), taken at the Orange Olympic Pool in 1988, provided an ideal representation of Australia’s swimming culture. (Provided by: Max Dupin Estate/Copyright Office)
To address this imbalance, Chapman commissioned new work from five artists: Marian Abboud & Think & Do Tank’s Seed of Hope Collective, Katerina Assistin, Dennis Golding, Mike Hewson, and JD Reforma, to “challenge or problematize its historical representation.”
One of those works, Watch the Water, is a multimedia work by Western Sydney artist Aboud that documents migrant and refugee women’s experiences around water.
Abood grew up as a first-generation Australian with immigrant parents who had no connection to water, and says learning to swim was a top priority for him as a child.
Her parents realized that for the beach to be a safe and not dangerous place, their children must be competent swimmers.
“We took swimming lessons growing up, and now we’re really confident in the water,” she says.
Watch the Water has its roots in Abood’s work with girls at a local high school 20 years ago.
“Many of them had never been to the beach because it was too far away to access,” Aboud said.
”[On] On one of our excursions we took them to the women’s baths in Coogee [McIver Ladies’ Baths] And it changed their lives a lot. This was a huge eye-opener for the world around them, not just in a 5km radius [from Western Sydney]. ”
That led Aboud to think about community access to waterways and how to build people’s trust in water.
She said the many barriers that prevent some communities from accessing swimming spots, whether it’s the ocean or a public pool, such as geography, transportation and prohibitive costs, are often overlooked.
”Being able to take your family to the pool is actually a privilege and a luxury.”
Access has improved, making Parramatta Lake and Penrith Beach, also known as Pondy, a popular alternative to public pools for swimming enthusiasts.
For the women Abboud worked with on Watch the Water, learning to swim and becoming more confident in the water was liberating.
“Being able to float is the closest thing to freedom that many women have felt,” she says.
Revisiting pivotal moments in history
When Chapman first conceived of the exhibition, he had one work in mind. It’s Robert Campbell Jr.’s 1987 painting No Bath, commemorating the 1965 Freedom Rides protesting discrimination against Aboriginal people in rural New South Wales.
The protests, led by Alante and Kalkadoon man and activist Charles Perkins, famously led to the overturning of the ban that excluded Aboriginal children from Moree pools.
”[It’s an] “It’s an important social history painting… depicting a pivotal moment in relatively recent social history,” Chapman said.
Robert Campbell Jr., who painted No Baths (1987), grew up in Kempsey, one of the towns visited by Freedom Rides activists. (Supply: PGR)
Kamilaroi artist Dennis Golding revisits this history in Echoing Pathways, one of the exhibition’s newly commissioned works.
Golding worked with a group of students from Colalembli, a small town 140 kilometers west of Morley, to create a series of drypoint prints that meditate on their own experiences of exclusion 60 years after the Freedom Rides.
Golding asked the children if they still felt “unable to take a bath.” And the answer they came up with was shocking, Chapman says.
”Many of these young people still experience internalized or highly visible forms of discrimination and segregation.”
But the students’ work also included stories of survival and resilience.
“Ultimately, there was a really hopeful tone that the future could be bright,” Chapman said.
Golding also created a series of ceramic sculptures that mirror the shape of the lane dividers and are engraved with the phrase “You can go to the pool now,” which snake across the gallery walls among the students’ prints.
”[It’s an example of] “How the new committee will provide a different perspective on the historical works in the exhibition,” says Chapman.
Echoing Pathways “started by listening to the history of exclusion from public spaces across north-west NSW,” Golding said. (Supply: PRG)
For many people, the show has inspired them to reconsider their relationship with water.
“Everyone has a story about pools, some of which are nostalgic and others more modern,” Chapman says.
“But once you start asking these questions, you realize that these stories always speak to the complexity of life and the overriding sense that people in our society are good and want the best for themselves and others.”
pool show It will be on view at Penrith Regional Gallery until February 15th.