The Boneyard is an ambitious year-long project by Erin Coates, developed through a residency at Albany’s Historic Whaling Station and anchored in her personal connection to Kinjarling / Albany and her family’s history as shell divers.
In response the Whaling Station site and archives, and inspired by the submerged bone piles left by decades of commercial whaling, Coates investigates the entanglement of human and animal histories weaving together personal family stories, WA’s whaling history, and the fragile relationship between humans and animals.
Through haunting imagery, sculptural forms, underwater film, and large-scale installation works, The Boneyard reflects on memory, extinction, and regeneration, creating a powerful meditation on the intersection of family narrative, natural history, and the remnants of whaling in Western Australia.
Join us onsite in the Historic Whaling Station gallery for retrospective drawing and small sculpture, and below the flensing deck for large scale suspended installation work.
On display Friday 3 July to Sunday 30 August 2026.
Supported by DLGSC, Western Australian Government and City of Albany.
