Photographs by Peter Liddy
A disused, filth-caked bathtub, an empty hallway, doors thrown open as though in haste, a door scarred by deep gouges. These images and others form Peter Liddy's homage to a hidden aspect of Brisbane's local history, the now defunct Blair Pavilion, formerly the Ipswich Hospital for the Insane. It is now a heritage listed building under the auspices of the University of Queensland's Ipswich campus, and lies empty.
Liddy's photographic practice has long blended a love for industrial architecture with a keen aesthetic eye and interest in social history. This latest body of work celebrates the architectural character of the building and acknowledges its convoluted history and many guises over the passage of time, as well as the individuals who played out their tumultuous existences within its fraught halls. In a sense, this series is an extension of Liddy's more recent photographs of the North Ipswich Railway Workshops in so far as his larger artistic project involves recording and documenting the existence of people in their absence.
Liddy's photographic essay captures the physical quiet of the now empty space and, on a metaphorical level, exposes society's lingering awkward silence in the face of mental illness, that great social taboo. Looking at Liddy's images it is possible to imagine the embarrassed and no doubt infrequent visits by shamed family members to which the building played silent witness. Although in 2004 mental illness is not considered the social stigma it may have once been, contemporary society still struggles to deal with concepts of insanity and madness, and how to treat, house and protect those who are afflicted. One of the most incongruous images in Silence: Imprisoned Reality depicts a large room, vacant