one man in his time

jewish museum of australia, st kilda, VIC
11 SEPTEMBER 2016 - 5 MARCH 2017

A collection of things belonging to one person can become a portrait of that person and their time in the world. They anchor the gaze in memory. The individual objects have their own narrative and the sum of these creates a poetic topography, a material landscape, a sense of a life. By bringing the personal collection of my late husband’s possessions into the museum I extend an open invitation into my space of memory, to share in a life and its loss.

READ MORE…

Neon, 20 x 130cm

Found objects, dimensions variable

Found objects, dimensions variable

Found objects, dimensions variable

Everyday Counts, paper tags, cotton, shark wire, ink, 4000 x 5000cm

The traditional museological indexing system of tagging artefacts is referenced in this work. This device gives physical and kinetic form to the sum of a life - there are 22,740 tags representing each day from birth to death, my meditative construct of a finite life.

Detail, Everyday Counts

Memory of Dancing, wax, glass, cotton, timber, 4000 x 3000cm

Traditional 24-hour Jewish mourner's candles are displayed in repetition, within a formal structure, to give shape and substance to the time of bereavement when the world seems to have lost all form. A total of 2555 candles fill the shelves, each one representing a day since the death of my loved one -
a personal ritual taken from a long tradition of remembrance through the marking of time.

Touching Stones, perspex, stones, ink, 40 x 90 x 90cm

In keeping with the Jewish tradition of placing stones at a grave, visitors to the first iteration of this exhibition were asked to place stones in the center of the labyrinth and inscribe a message; as symbol of visitation and a gesture of honouring a man and his memory.

Henry's Mother, Archival Inkjet print, 60cm X 48cm