Image: Kevin Lee, A Break From The Game, 2020, oil on canas. Image courtesy the artist.
Greetings From My Living Room
18 April — 21 July 2023
Location: Adelaide Town Hall, Mankurri-api Kuu (Reconciliation room) and First Floor Gallery, 128 King William Street, Adelaide
Featuring: Caitlyn Davies (Dustin-Koa), Millie Hopton, Michelle Joy Magias, Kevin Lee, Billy Oakley
Curated by Chira Grasby
ART WORKS Early Career Curator 2023
Long before social media, postage communication was one of the easiest and most reliable ways to connect with distant loved ones. While letters served as a means to send long (and often formal) prose, the invention of postcards in the late 19thC created a whole new format for written dialogue. By the mid-20thC they had transformed from their origins as pre-stamped blank cards to the realms of photography and illustration, and then into brightly printed linen artworks. Most notably introduced by German-born American-migrant Curt Teich, these modern iterations featured significant landmarks and city slogans carrying holiday recaps and family updates, as well as heartfelt messages and personal notes.
Greetings From My Living Room takes direct inspiration from these postcards, inviting artists to portray elements of their everyday lives and share them with audiences as a form of visual communication. Through predominantly painting and illustration, Caitlyn Davies (Dustin-Koa), Millie Hopton, Michelle Joy Magias, Kevin Lee, and Billy Oakley provide glimpses into their lives through still life setups, depictions of home environments, and responses to personally significant landscapes. Much like postcards their artworks portray snapshots of a particular time and place, with audiences standing in as the recipients.
The exhibition ties in a range of personal spaces that extend from the macro to the micro – they exist as messages traversing landscapes to arrive quietly at their terminus. The vibrant palette of a landscape is presented alongside the depiction of an old bathroom sink, and a painted dog resting outside a family home is hung opposite a kitchen bench laid out with fresh dinner ingredients. These varied moments of domesticity are linked to one another through the carpeted floors and homely interior of Adelaide Town Hall, elements that mirror aspects of typical Australian homes, whilst juxtaposed as a public space shared amongst the community.
Greetings From My Living Room is presented at the Adelaide Town Hall and Mankurri-api Kuu / Reconciliation Room as part of ART WORKS Early Career Curator Program and is delivered by Guildhouse in partnership with the City of Adelaide.
Adelaide Town Hall is an accessible venue.
