Home at last

13 September – 8 March 2009  | Children’s Gallery

Introduction | Article | Selected works | Participate | Activities | Picture my world | Events

 

Designed especially for children, Home at last encourages children to think about ideas of the home through artworks about home life and house objects from different times, places and cultures.

For many it is the relationships within the household that make a house a home. The prints, paintings and photographs in this exhibition explore everyday ideas of home and family life, including extended family, friends and much–loved pets.

Some artists comment on the place of the home in Australian popular culture. One colourful example is Howard Arkley’s painting Floral exterior which explores the Australian dream of the suburban home. Inspired by advertising and magazines, Arkley imposes interior decoration on the exterior of the house.

Indigenous Australian works in the exhibition show how the artists’ close connections to home can be expressed through their choice of materials, techniques and function. Golbordok (a traditional bush honey collecting bag) is closely woven from pandanus fibre and embedded with wax to ingeniously prevent leakage.

Inside the homelike exhibition space of Home at last, preschool and primary school children are encouraged to take a fresh look at the familiar and to imagine the experience of others.