HEAVY DUTY: Jack Morellini with WFAC, DADAA and WASA
Boorloo Sign, HEAVY DUTY, 2021, Kings Park, Boorloo, so-called Perth, corflute, spray paint, cable ties. Image by Chris Luu.
Artist: Jack Morellini
Location: Elders Woolstores and Princess May Park, Fremantle
Project Partners: Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, DADAA Fremantle and West Australian Skateboarding Association (WASA)
Work In Progress: The project investigates the unnoticed gestures taking place between the people and communities in Fremantle’s Princess May Park and Elders Woolstores. Through collaboration with WASA on the retention of skateboarding as an important and culturally rich heritage use of site, Jack will document his findings and create a record of the important life that exists as it stands to amplify the stories of this community.
About the artist:
HEAVY DUTY is an artistic collective exploring the potential of space as a living medium. We transform and activate sites—whether by reimagining existing landmarks or creating new ones—to spark connection, conversation, and curiosity. Our practice unfolds through close engagement with the social, political, environmental, and historical layers that shape each context. The resulting sculptures, installations, and interventions invite communities to encounter shared questions from fresh perspectives—where play, criticality, and imagination coexist.
Jack Morellini is an artist and spatial practitioner whose work spans installation, sculpture and material intervention. Informed by the critical perspectives of skateboarding as an embodied, subversive engagement with architecture, industrial design and public space, his practice explores construction, impermanence and the socio-political dynamics of the built environment. Co-founder of the artist collective HEAVY DUTY and the Perth-based artist-run-initiative Light Works, Morellini’s projects, both solo and collaborative, investigate how cities are continuously reshaped through labour, memory, and informal acts of movement.
About the project partners:
Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre (WFAC) is a creative campus committed to fostering a community of innovation and inspiration, collaboration and curiosity, risk taking and rigour. WFAC is both a cultural and learning precinct situated in Walyalup (Fremantle) on Whadjuk Nyoongar Boodjar in the centre of a city celebrated for its innovation, culture and creativity, shaped by the many communities who call it home. Supporting local artists is at the heart of all the centre’s programming.
Spread over a four-acre site and housed in a gothic heritage building, their annual program includes contemporary visual arts exhibitions and a diverse range of multidisciplinary performance, music and discourse. WFAC supports a unique artist in residence program, creative learning programs and home to a café and our WFAC Shop. They also manage and curate the Moores Building Contemporary Arts Space in the West End of Fremantle.
DADAA has been at the forefront of disability arts and Community and Cultural Development in Western Australia for the past 30 years. DADAA creates inclusive communities through arts mentoring and studio programs, collaborating with communities on large scale projects, and providing access to arts and culture for people with disability. DADAA aspires to be a voice of ambition, daring, and innovation. To challenge preconceptions and perceptions, think differently and freely, and create great art – art that changes people’s lives.
DADAA partners and works with emerging and established artists, communities, arts organisations, local and state governments, and not-for-profits. Producing community arts and regional development projects which focus on inclusion and capacity building. Taking the stories and voices marginalised people to audiences and communities. Through our programs and projects we advocate for a change; influencing the national conversation around arts, disability, equity, and inclusion.
WASA is a not-for-profit incorporated association that aims to nurture skateboarding and its culture throughout Western Australia. They are a group of passionate skateboarders who volunteer their time to keep their
community thriving. Over the past two years WASA has campaigned to protect the world famous Woolstores Ledges from demolition during the building's redevelopment. This was achieved through large scale community events, activism through artwork, and effective engagement with council, state members, and the media. Similarly, WASA has saved Fremantle Skatepark from demolition after a rash decision by the State Government to replace it with parking bays.
WASA has begun delivering skate workshops to rural communities, as well as consulted on public works to develop new skate and innovative skate spaces. As an organisation WASA intends to strengthen community and connection within
skateboarding whilst highlighting its benefits to the wider community. WASA continues to expand in its capacity for community outreach, expert consultation, and provision of high-quality events.
