Home-show, as coupled words, communicates a mixed message. Home has associations of privacy and domesticity while show is about something more revealing. Economic status binds these words because without a home there is no show. Home Shows are where renovator’s dreams are played out and unfulfilled desires are cultivated. It stretches the mind to imagine the careful contemplation of the crafted object in these highly charged environments.
The installation of Home Show at Glen Eira Gallery was in actuality a show without a home. Interestingly, the physical reference to a home was intimated by architectural floor plan outlines of fictitious rooms rendered in white tape on the gallery floor. The artworks situated within these imaginary rooms, were sparsely placed for a lack of furniture and personal belongings. Unlike the home environment, the intangible smells, stains and telling signs of a person’s life and personality were missing. The psychological and social contexts for the artworks were absent in Home Show.
The floor plan device was a direct borrowing from Lars Von Triers’ film ‘Dogville’, with the intention by the curator, Stephen Gallagher, of “stripping away the mundane to show those crafted objects of substance which we surround ourselves to reflect our personality”.
The reference to Von Trier was not openly stated and remained a “borrowing” because of a lack of further engagement with the idea evident in the exhibition design. Excepting some works carefully placed on the floor, the exhibition display mainly utilized white board and plinth, which effectively placed the broad range of work on exhibition firmly within the gallery context, weakening rather than reinforcing the fiction of make believe rooms in a home without walls.
The works represented in the Home Show demonstrated the varied, committed and confident practices of local makers. Featured were the ceramics of David Ray, David Pottinger and Vipoo Srivilasa. Textiles and prints by Janet Gallagher, furniture design by Josephine Yuen, glass by Pamela Stadus with rugs and mixed media by Isabel Foster. Jewellery by Hong Rye Kim and Elodie Darwish were included as well as sound based installation by Evan Lancaster and Steven Boyd.
The multi-media work by Chrystal Smith entitled ‘Behind closed doors’ provided a theatrical prop for the make believe “Dogville” home. Smith utilized a white Corinthian style front door to house her digital artwork. At eye height through the keyhole optical viewer, the audience was instantly transported to the intimacy of a stranger’s kitchen. Various inhabitants of this miniature yet life sized world negotiated the space in a naturalistic manner: sitting at a kitchen table, standing by a cupboard. The pace was slow, the scene was typical and yet also tantalizingly revealing.
The everyday interactions we have with objects are really the other half of this story, a story that reveals itself in the everyday. Objects are enlivened by their “use”: the giving, receiving, touching, filling, breaking and bequeathing. This reveals much about the object and its qualities, qualities imbued by the maker and shared through the life of the object by its users. The choice of objects we surround ourselves with does reflect something about ourselves but must be seen in a more holistic manner to glean insight into ones personality.
Pearl Gillies is a professional metalsmith based in Melbourne, Victoria.
Last modified 11-May-2005
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the official policy of Craft Victoria. Please log into the online forums to discuss the content of these articles.