Photo: Lillie Thompson
This work was produced for FUTURE INHERITANCE: 20 Speculative Objects for a Time to Come, curated by Marsha Golemac as part of Melbourne Design Week.
FUTURE INHERITANCE showcased the work of twenty multi-disciplinary artists and designers, invited to consider how, and why, objects carry meaning and, in doing so, create one such item to leave behind for the next generation.
The exhibition explored notions of connection through the power and significance of objects, and the stories they carry, from one generation to the next. If we were to leave an object behind for a loved one – what would it look like and what is the significance of that object; emotional, historical, cultural or otherwise?
This work - The Birds - references a pair of ornaments that were passed on to me after my grandmother died. Carved from the deer-horn of her native Poland, they depict a pair of birds in flight.
These inherited artefacts took on a new resonance for me over the Melbourne Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, as I grappled with what felt like a dissolution of opposites: freedom and containment, intimacy and solitude, movement and stasis.
During this time, the domestic space became the locus for all activity, as time morphed and crystalised. The work made for this exhibition reflects on these conditions and serves as a relic and votive offering to a confounding time.
Photo: Tomas Friml
Photo: Tomas Friml
Photo: Tomas Friml