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Parramatta Female Factory Precinct memory project
www.pffpmemory.org.au

Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project is a social history and contemporary art project founded in 2012, centered on the significant site of the former Female Factory and Girls Industrial school at Parramatta in Western Sydney. Our project will continue in 2016, funded by Arts NSW, with workshops throughout the year and on-site public events in May and September 2015. The PFFP Memory Project operates from the Kamballa section of the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct, 1 Fleet St, Parramatta.



Bonney Djuric points out the girls' names scored on the walls inside one of the former Parramatta Girls Home confinement rooms of Bethel House. Photo: Lily Hibberd, 2012.

The PFFP Memory Project explores the experience, history and representation of institutionalised women and children in Australia and foster creative opportunities for those with a direct experience of institutional confinement to represent and articulate their own history. It brings together artists, advisors, former occupants, traditional owners, local communities and other New South Wales residents in an environment of exchange, investigation and interpretation of the site and its history with the aim of activating it in the public sphere as a Site of Conscience.

Our most recent exhibition Abandoned histories, forsaken women
was presented for Island Salon, Underbelly Arts Festival 2015
1-2 August 2015
Curators : Sophie Kitson, Danielle Zorbas and Angela Garrick
Cockatoo Island, Sydney, Australia
feauring a dual video installation by Bonney Djuric & Lily Hibberd
and the PFFP Memory Project members








About the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct
Parramatta Female Factory Precinct is among the most significant sites of incarceration in Australian colonial history. Established in 1821 the Precinct has been in continuous use as a place of confinement, firstly for convict women, then orphaned, destitute or abandoned children, juvenile offenders and people with mental health conditions, and until recently female prisoners. Its historic institutions represent two adjoining sites namely, the convict Female Factory, Parramatta Lunatic Asylum and now Cumberland Hospital and the Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta Girls Home now the Norma Parker Detention Centre – together these sites stand as a testimony to 191 years of the most difficult yet critical eras of Australian history.