Circular Economies Residency: Loren Kronemyer in Esperance #6

Mar 2

SPACED Circular Economies artist Loren Kronemyer leaves us with some last lingering thoughts about Kepa Kurl/Esperance, and reflects back on her time at Cannery Arts Centre.

NOVEMBER 2026: IDEAS YET TO BE EXPLORED - ESPERANCE

To conclude this chapter of their lives, the artists offer a list of future research to undertake in the region of Kepa Kurl / Esperance, if time and resources allow.

Aircraft

Create a subversive homage to the Flying Pub Crawl (LK flies variation):

Esperance Scenic Flights are operating on a limited itinerant basis. One of their offerings, The Flying Pub Crawl, skips guests between several remote pubs on a chartered 6-seater Cessna
This project development and showing will involve both on the ground and in-air training to obtain a private pilot license through the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Once licensed, I will invite intimate audiences on a daring post-immersive interpellation of The Flying Pub Crawl
Project development timeline has been revisited in light coincidental similarities with Nathan Fielder’s project The Rehearsal Season 2

Create subversive homage to the Flying Pub Crawl (on foot)

Proposed itinerary:
Day 1: Departure time: 6:00. Walk: Esperance to Condingup Tavern (15 hrs). Arrival at 21:00 Overnight at Congingup Tavern
Day 2: Departure time: 6:00 am. Walk: Condingup Tavern to Lucky Bay Brewing (14 hrs). Arrival at 10:00. Overnight at Bandy Creek.
Day 3: Departure time: 9:00 am. Walk: Lucky Bay Brewing to Gibson Soak (6 hrs). Arrival at 3:00. Enjoy happy hour.
This version presents a more reasonable timeline and carbon impact

Blasting female shot-callers to host a workshop

Get together with shot callers

One night at a music event at the Cannery, I met a female shot caller on break from her job in Kalgoorlie. She told me about her life and work, collaborating to safely and cleanly blast apart chunks of rock. This presented a fascinating line of artistic inquiry that merits further research. Can this skill translate to an ecological practice?

Teach licensed shotfirers to DJ

As the shot caller and I chatted, a local DJ was playing italo disco music. I couldn’t help but wonder, would her innate sense of stakes and timing make her a good DJ? Merits further research.

Become licensed shotfirer

Would learning to manage explosives assist me in directing high stakes, collaborative works of scale?

Boats

One day, accept the offer to go out on a boat

At the end of our visit, we received an offer to go out on a boat. It didn’t fit our schedule.

Collaborative physical score with Bandy Creek Marina Crane

A short walk from our billet is the Bandy Creek Marina Crane. It is beautiful and blue, and has hoisted pleasure yachts, fishing boats, and research vessels. How could this iconic instrument truss further meaning making or live events?

Butcherbird

Record and learn the butcherbird song audible in Antoinette’s back yard, share with composer Hollis Taylor.

Clay Targets

The Esperance Clay Target Club (Member Association: Australian Clay Target Association) hosts shooting events where members compete to shoot clay targets (clay pigeons, skeets) out of the sky using shotguns. They allowed us to harvest many kilos of broken and intact target discs from their shooting ground, which we attempted to decompose, heal, and recreate. Further ideas include:

Repair Esperance potholes with melted clay targets
Reuse shattered clay targets for jewellery
Mosaic with shattered clay targets
Site visit with Clay Target shooters to Esperance Beach
Procure Esperance Clay Target Club baseball cap
Hand make clay target out of natural pitch and talc
Time lapse document decomposition of clay target
Underwater archeology searching for evidence of clay target coral reef
Recreate underwater clay target coral reef

Collaboration

Collaboration with Speed Smith (Geoffrey Smith, Speedline Art), Esperance based painter and airbrush artist with a 30 year legacy of illustrating surf culture in the region
Collaboration with Anything and Everything Esperance, a dynamic couple designing and printing wildly colourful and inventive merchandise
Collaboration with Esperance Mermaid Leather: Australia's only fish leather specialist
Collaboration with Shark Eyes, adapting practice of putting eyes on things to deter sharks, experimenting with shark / human communication
Develop New New Fire Island outpost / site office near Bandy Creek.

Frogs

Count the species of frogs we see and hear
Celebratory engine revving score in tune with motorbike frogs

Farming

Collaborative physical score with combine harvester

Gibson Soak

Play pool at the Gibson Soak Hotel

Granite

Artist talk at Esperance Stonehenge
Clay target carved from granite
Learn to make headstones

Horses

Talk to the horses at the Esperance Turf Club
Take Antoinette’s horses to the beach with her

Lithium

Visit Mt. Cattlin Lithium Mine
Explore the concept of “Care and Maintenance” as a social practices, riffing on Merle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art

Pink Lake

Pink Lake is an iconic landmark of Esperance, but changing conditions mean it is no longer actually pink. I propose a series of artworks that capture the cultural impact of this transition, a case-study exemplifying the ecological uncanny, the loss of collective narrative and local identity via the creeping baseline shifts of climate change.

Edition of shotgun shells filled with Pink Lake salt
Collection and typology of merchandise that depicts Pink Lake as pink
Archival footage and photography exhibition

Postal Service

Develop Pony Express Postal Service, finally addressing and subverting the historic United States colonial courier Pony Express as live art duo Pony Express.
Further explore connection between collaborator Ian Sinclair, Esperance suburb Sinclair, Sinclair House, and the Sinclair plaque outside the post office.

Pottery Club

Make and fire 12 piece dining set
Make my own fermenting crock
Learn to raku fire
Make terra cotta clay targets
Make wild clay targets

Shipwrecks

Exposure therapy to cure LK of submechanophobia.
Further explore special interest in Dutch East India Company / VOC shipwrecks in Western Australia

Snakes

Meet local snake handler
Begin research into low dose venom exposure in pursuit of transhumanist health outcomes / mithridatism
Research local mithridatist practices

Skylab

Document a typology of Skylab merchandise

Tanks

During World War II, Esperance was home to a number of military bases. Local stories tell that post-war, a number of tanks circulated in the hands of the community, used to build roads, level fields, and create infrastructure, including the building that is now the Cannery Arts Centre. A 30 Leopard AS1 tank remains sitting near the centre of town.

Decommissioned military equipment being used by the people to create civic structures opens a world of potential. What remains unexcavated in this history, and how could we speculate further?
I propose a series of recorded interviews with local residents with ties to this history, which I will then develop into an all-ages participatory artwork, in collaboration with hobbyist military model builders, co-designing a scale model of a creative city with no standing army.

Theatre

Artist talk at Bijou Theatre
Work with Esperance Theatre Guild to stage table read of verbatim script documenting our residency

Velodrome

Host busy bee at the velodrome

Images: Site of former clay target reef, still by Loren Kronemyer. Esperance Clay Target Club, photo by Hosting, E-Waste Buy-Back at Cannery Arts Centre, photo by sarsby. Esperance Pistol Club, photo by Hosting. Screening of 1894 Thomas Edison Annie Oakley film at Esperance Pistol Club. Stills by Jennene Riggs. Gun collector paraphernalia, photo by sarsby.

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Circular Economies is produced as a joint partnership by PICA - Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and SPACED.