How Benjamin Paul is bringing cars and spas together in Hobart this month.

Tell us about the project and your involvement in it. waynapuni pools is a public artwork that transforms wrecked cars into saunas, hot pools and steam rooms, built with young First Nations collaborators here on Muwinina Country. Over the past year, we’ve been running workshops where Aboriginal students from Montrose Bay High have learned welding, fabrication and design skills through re-imagining old Commodores and Falcons as spaces for gathering and care. I lead the artistic direction of the project, designing and building alongside the kids, working with cultural mentors from Karadi Aboriginal Corporation, and a team of local artists and fabricators. We’re asking what happens when these fossil fuel beasts become places of recovery, when the material of the colony is turned into something healing.

It’s a pretty niche confluence of ideas! Why saunas and spas? Why Commodores? It started with a fascination for what heat and water do to people. In a sauna, everyone slows down. The air becomes thick and conversations change, you can’t hide in the heat. Across cultures, bathing is often a way to connect to place and to each other. Commodores and Falcons, on the other hand, are such loaded objects here, symbols of fossil-fuel culture, masculinity, speed. It felt powerful to reclaim that material and let it breathe differently. So we welded these two ideas together: the wreck and the ritual. Heat moving through steel, water held inside a car body. The project is both funny and serious, it’s about making new mythologies from the debris of the old ones.

How do you think this might inform the future art practices for the kids involved? For many of the students, this was their first time using power tools or working on something at this scale. They built real infrastructure, saunas that hold fire and water, and that gives a tangible sense of agency and confidence. But it’s more than technical skills. They learned that art can be social, collaborative, and political. They saw that creativity doesn’t have to sit in a gallery; it can live in a car yard, in a conversation, or in the act of keeping a fire going for someone else. For the First Nations students involved, it was also a chance to express cultural connection to water and Country in a new way, and to lead ceremony. I think it planted a seed, that making and caring aren’t separate things, and that art can be a way of shaping the world around you.

How can our readers experience the work? We’re inviting the public to experience the waynapuni pools this November at Rosny Farm, 13-18 November. Over six days, we’ll run a series of two-hour bathing sessions led by the young people and artists who built the work. When you arrive, you’ll be guided through a quiet process, moving between car saunas, hot pools and rest spaces, surrounded by steam and metal. Each session includes a small ceremony co-led by the youth, performers and cultural hosts. It’s part performance, part bath, part communal reflection.

Bring a towel and a robe and be a part of this experiment of collective care. Spots are very limited and bookings are essential, so make sure you book now! And if you can’t make it, you can also check out our short documentary film via benjamin-paul.com.

What is next? For me, a big long bath, haha. waynapuni pools sits within my broader, career-long investigation into how collective bathing can help connect us with Country, each other and ourselves. This is just one phase of a larger journey; one where we hope to tour the work and experiment with new ways to hold space for one another through art.

“waynapuni” (why-nah-pu-nee) is in palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aborigines waynapuni pools (2025) was created over nine months on Muwinina Country with Aboriginal students at Montrose Bay High, in partnership with Karadi Aboriginal Corporation. The project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. In addition, the project has been supported by Arts Tasmania, City of Clarence, Kitsch Events and Milangkani Projects. For a full list of credits, please visit benjamin-paul.com.