From early July to late December 2017 my work James the Rat King Diptych and artists book will be exhibited at the Qld State Archives Windmill Exhibition.
The ‘Report on Plague in Queensland’ by Burnett Ham was inspiration for this work (a copy of which is housed at the Qld State Archives) It focuses on a documented event in 1907 at New Farm. Garnett’s Produce store, on James and Hawthorne Sts, contained plague rats. During the January school holidays 11 children contracted the plague, along with five others. 16 were infected, 6 died. During the investigation of this site, floor-boards were lifted, to find skeletonised rats, the perfect place for a rat king to fester. This is a gothic fiction, almost too ghastly to be real, born out of the events from 1907.

Artists in Conversation: Nicola Hooper