Travelling along the country road, something sticks out as clear as day, but you’ll never know it until the sun sets and it begins to glow. Watching from the roadside, ‘A Haunting’ is the flickering of an abandoned house; the work of artist Tracey Moffatt. 

Tracey Moffatt at Armatree, NSW, 2021, photo by Dara Gill. Image © the artist.

The latest art installation in the region, just outside Armatree, is one of the most mysterious the Western Plains has seen so far. 

Western Plains Cultural Centre Curator Kent Buchanon said that the two likely go hand in hand. 

“It’s the most unique artwork in landscape in Australia really. It’s something you can only view at certain hours of the night, and it’s something that you can’t go right up to, it is about stopping on the side of the road,” Mr Buchanon said. 

“Watching it, in many respects, it’s a very personal kind of experience in the sense that you sort of watch it and you may generate a whole host of emotions,” he said. 

The internationally acclaimed Australian artist Tracey Moffat created the installation from an abandoned home, eerily pulsing light as it sits in the distance. 

Created over a year, Mr Buchanon said that the pandemic had a lot to answer for the creation, as well as other recent stints of art in the Western Plains. 

“Once we realised we couldn’t go outside and do the normal things that we do, we were stuck at home and we reached for culture…we watched a lot of TV, we watched movies, and we listened to music,” Mr Buchanon said.

A Haunting can only be viewed after dark. Tracey Moffatt, A Haunting, 2021. Site-specific installation at Armatree, NSW. Photo by Belinda

Soole. Image © the artist.

“I think we realised art has a way of lifting us up from a situation and making us feel elated and kind of positive about things,” he said. 

Positive isn’t a word that comes to mind when you first catch a glimpse of the abandoned homestead glowing in the night, but Ms Moffat believes otherwise, even though it can ‘read like a crime scene’.

Instead, she describes it as “a beacon of hope during challenging times”.

“A Haunting is a house with a rhythmic heartbeat and it burns red. It sits campfire-like and honours First Nations peoples on whose land it sits,” Ms Moffatt said. 

The artwork can be viewed from 6pm to 6am each night, and is a one hour drive north of Dubbo on the Castlereagh highway, between Gilgandra and Gulargambone.

The house is very visible and is on the left hand side, just before the Armatree Road turn off.  

The artwork sits on private property called Sunnyside and viewers are requested to remain outside the property gates. 

A Haunting will be on display until the end of 2023.