Rebel

BACKGROUND Rebel (2018), Propeller Arts (H Edwards, A Kocis & R Young), is a projection artwork based on The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Wright, 2013), a contested history of women's presence on the Ballarat goldfields. Urban projection festivals like Vivid Sydney and White Night Melbourne evoke the spectacle of vaudeville and the fairground, creating visual pleasure and curiosity through their use of colour, movement and illusion. Rarely do they aspire to artistic innovation, critical discourse or engagement with place. One exception is Still Here (Muir, 2016, White Night) which conjured striking scenes of Aboriginal post-colonial endurance and survival on the NGV facade. Inspired by Muir's work, Rebel articulates the hidden herstory of women's presence at the Eureka stockade. CONTRIBUTION Rebel was a deeply collaborative work: Young animated Edwards' painted figures and Kocis filmed the time-lapse backdrop. Rebel exploited the massive scale of the projection and the expressive possibilities of light in space to evoke a past in which giant domestic workers reveal their rebel colours, making strange the street of a regional town, and literally shedding light on its female ghosts. The work goes beyond its function as a cinematic attraction to evoke a parallel reality that celebrates the foremothers of our democracy. SIGNIFICANCE Rebel builds on Propeller Arts' previous public art projects 1000 Tears (2013), Bookends (2014), Pride Mischief & Murder (2015) and Bunny & the UFO (2017). DAE White Night commissioned Rebel (artist fees $8884; installation $37000) via competitive tender. It was projected during the festivals in Ballarat and Geelong to a combined audience of 130,000 people and was cited by both director and manager as a major highlight. The contribution of Rebel is to demonstrate how the emerging artform of large-scale public projection can go beyond excitement and spectacle to activate and critique a site by visualising its invisible history.