Palatial Structure is a site-responsive installation that responds to the former lives of the Bon Marchè Arcade and was developed during a residency at Cool Change Contemporary. The exhibition engages with archival ephemera accessed from the State Library of Western Australia and the City of Perth History Centre.

Bon Marchè Arcade is the last remaining building and tangible trace of the quality fashion and drapery department store the “Perth Bon Marché.” The arcade was at one stage a thriving shopping avenue for pedestrians to travel from Barrack Street to the Hay Street store. The eventual closure and demolition of the Bon Marché resulted in traffic ceasing in the arcade and its usual activity coming to a halt. Through exploring the itinerancy of artist-run initiatives as never tied to one permanent tenancy, Liebetrau reflects on how these ephemeral art spaces provide the opportunity for Perth’s marginal and neglected buildings to gain visibility and re-activate the bygone.

The works in this exhibition mediate on the periphery and consider the potency for latent narratives to draw attention to the original fabric of the building rather than the immediate.

Lisa Liebetrau is a multidisciplinary artist based in Perth, Western Australia. Liebetrau’s practice investigates the architectural, historical and relational specificities of artist-run institutions through site-specific works that directly reference the site of exhibition.

Since graduating in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Curtin University, Liebetrau has completed residencies at Another Project Space and Fremantle Arts Centre. In 2017, Liebetrau presented her first solo exhibition A Temporary Arrangement at Smart Casual and was invited to produce a new site-specific work for the group show BRB earlier this year, also at Smart Casual in Fremantle. More recently, Lisa completed a residency at Cool Change Contemporary to develop works for this solo exhibition.