Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby, Sydney

The idea of the house or the home as a site of belonging and connection is one that resonates with each of us. This work seeks to unpack attachments associated with an old family-owned house (no longer extant), and the transitory characteristics of memory and change.

The work responds to interpretations of selected oral histories relating to the property (through embroidered text), and reflects the house’s uncomplicated and modest attributes (used and weathered materials). Materials that reflect a patina, a history, and the simple beauty and mystery of aging are used to reference the house and a selection of its former inhabitants. The installation suggests previous lives having been lived, messages communicated, and something that cannot be recovered. It is an attempt at dialogue, and therefore some trace of connection, with predecessors.

The use of reclaimed and fragile textile in the work is intended to allude to the processes of making, the personal and the certainty of degeneration. This degeneration may well leave the physical evidence of connection in tatters, but it has little impact on its emotional ones.