SHELTER:

This exhibition explores the notions and emotions of shelter in a climate-ravaged world. Shelter is universally accepted as a basic human need. Without it, we are unable to live a productive, healthy life, take up opportunities that make the most of our unique human talents, and contribute to our community. Yet homelessness , not shelter, is a persistent feature of our society. Why can’t we provide it to all people in our wealthy, secure country?  

Central to the idea of shelter is protection and security. This protection is, in theory, woven into the fabric of our patriarchal society. But that fabric neither protects nor sustains women, children, and the natural environment we live in. In the 21st century, we are called to reimagine and reclaim our ideas of shelter to survive and thrive. Women want their voices heard and their communities and ecosystems protected. This requires a new kind of decision-making, in which we draw on our collective priorities and strengths to create and nourish new sustainable solutions.

Grounded in core expressions of shelter – houses, tents, life preservers – each of the installations in the exhibition ask community members to respond to the facts of, as well as the emotions arising from, government decisions that perpetuate inequality of shelter and delay just access to it. They also invite the imagining and articulating of women-centred approaches, in which the fabric of society can be re-woven from nurturing, equitable, environmentally sustainable, and inclusive materials. Using remnant and recycled fabrics, some immersed for months in the Mandurah marina, each piece is embellished with simple, imperfect stitches that make visible the mark of a single human hand, repeating an SOS signal in morse code, tracing the shared experience of witness and distress, repeating a mantra of love and justice.