Exhibition Opening and Film Screening - Bulga

What do you think the Hunter Valley's landscape will look like after coal mining?

That's the question put forward in the immersive Welcome to the Void exhibit, which will be exhibition at Bulga Community Centre Inc. 28-29 March 2026, and that underpins the the explorative film Orange to Blue Skies, which follows two young people from the Hunter Valley that set out to explore mining’s past and future.

Please join us for the exhibition launch and film screening on Saturday, 28 March, 5.30pm.

Welcome to the Void

This immersive exhibition invites you into the heart of the Hunter Valley, NSW, where landscapes bear the deep scars of open-cut coal mining. The exhibition presents material collected through ethnographic and arts-based methods with people living in the Hunter Valley’s mining country. It explores how local communities experience and respond to environmental disturbance and how mining legacies and post-mining landscapes, particularly so-called final voids, transform into hopeful futures or haunting remnants of extraction.

Featuring a rich tapestry of participant-created artworks, collaborative murals, creative interpretations of field data, walking interview photographs, and an ethnographic film, the exhibition offers intimate, grounded perspectives on life after mining. These pieces illuminate the emotional and cultural dimensions of post-industrial landscapes – elements often overlooked in policy and planning.

Viewers are invited to engage with themes of place, memory, and transformation, not through conventional research formats, but through the raw, expressive power of community storytelling and creative expression. The exhibition becomes a space for reflection and reckoning, where questions of environmental justice and the possibility of alternative futures take centre stage.

By amplifying community voices and embracing artistic collaboration, the exhibition fosters dialogue, healing, and renewed connection to land. It is both a tribute to resilience and a call to imagine a more just and regenerative path forward.

Orange to Blue Skies

This experimental film follows two young people from the Hunter Valley, Australia, as they journey into the world of mining. Using their mobile phones, they set out to discover what the future might hold for a vast hole in the ground, and for the people of this mining country, whose lives have been built around it. Along the way, they encounter stories of both benefit and destruction, deepening their understanding of past decisions, community sentiment, and the forces that have shaped — and will continue to shape — this place. Through philosophical conversations, creative imaginings, and bold discoveries, the film weaves together the possibility of a different future, pondering the question: what will fill the void left behind after mining?

Contact: Hedda Haugen Askland, Hedda.Askland@newcastle.edu.au

The exhibition and film are part of the research project Mining voids and just transition: reimagining post-mining landscapes, lead by A/Prof Hedda Haugen Askland from The University of Newcastle and funded by the Australian Research Council (DP220100098).