In my earlier years as an artist, I was mainly interested in exploring the shapes and colours of the Australian landscape. Once you draw or paint a landscape it becomes part of your physical memory. From this kind of experience a search began to bring back a residual memory of my birthplace. The patterns and labyrinth structures of city maps were used as a starting point but my own memory started to take over. Through persistence a shift took place and an emotional journey lead me to my home, the house I grew up in. The compiled images and emotions of our home normally provide us with a feeling of comfort and security, but this is not always the case.
In my sculptural work I explore the crossover or threshold between the public and private sphere, the home and its fragile nature. The concept of Freud’s uncanny informed this body of work and is incorporated through the choice and placement of materials. There is a certain familiarity with the various components in the sculpture but the combination is unfamiliar and resembles a deconstructed house in a reconstructed model.
In my most recent paintings I am also interested in ideas of home, belonging and the body as it relates to architectural space. In my upcoming exhibition Best Before at the Gallery Down Town, Murwillambah, NSW, I am showing a series of watercolour paintings of the mid century beach houses found along the Queensland southern coast line. They are a realistic representation of actual buildings but include subtle marks of decay and a sense of emptiness.
I am asking the viewer to consider the broader ramifications of housing demolition, and questions the sanctity of memories and histories that are evoked through its ruins. By revealing the physical frameworks and structures that are at the heart of all houses, I am bringing a private space into the public eye. Within ongoing discussions around property development and affordability, the exhibition dismantles the utopian ideals of our urban landscape and asks us to excavate what is underneath the surface.
