Lo-Comotion at Carriageworks: Reviving the Redfern Railway

Carriageworks, the multi-function arts complex housed in the former Eveleigh Railway Workshops of the Redfern Waterloo precinct, encapsulates the oppositional, often contradictory, yet ultimately symbiotic interplay of modernity and postmodernity in the contemporary moment. Today, the site is regarded as a cosmopolitan hub for practitioners and audiences to facilitate community engagement with a typically localised and multidisciplinary contemporary art program. Whilst its current multitude of functions is a far-cry from the thriving focal point of mobilised urban industry it embodied during the early 20th century, its century old utilitarian façade provides a visual reminder of its modernist origins. Thus, the site manifests postmodernity’s ‘aesthetic introversion ’ and exploitation of nostalgia, conducive to ‘a parodic project ’ (Hutcheon, 1989, p. 194) and a critical, often ironic recalling of the past. Such a recalling casts into sharp relief, the dogmatic tunnel vision characteristic of the modernity project and offers a means by which to reclaim what has been cast aside in its wake; a sense of individual identity and engagement within a community. This chapter explores the impact of social process of industrialisation as both a driving force and reflection of modernity. This provides an appropriate framework to chart the rise o