While Swedish death cleaning and Marie Kondo encourage us to declutter, hoarders and maximalists have sustainability, trend resurgence and nostalgia on their side. It’s a conversation that’s been inextricable from popular discourse over the past decade – and now Adelaide artists are tapping in.
RELICS, a visual arts exhibition by nine Adelaide College of the Arts alumni, sets out to explore emotional attachments to objects as carriers of memory and meaning.
“One of the artists, Ashleigh Keller, came up with the title RELICS because we are kind of relics to the institution, to AC Arts, coming back, carrying history with us as we move forward,” emerging curator Shani Engelbrecht says.
What we inherit, what we choose to preserve and what we let go can often highlight intergenerational differences, and this is the influence behind the Fijian-Indian artist’s work.
“I’m a hoarder for sure: I love trinkets, I junk journal, that’s me,” Engelbrecht says. “Whereas my family, like my mum, she needs everything to be clean. However, my work is focusing on the one thing she won’t get rid of – a rusty old pan that we use for cooking.”
The pan was given to Engelbrecht’s mother by her uncle while she was living in her homeland of Fiji, made from the metal of a shipwrecked airplane and hammered into shape.
“She loves washing dishes, I think that’s her way to cope with everything,” Engelbrecht says. “She said to me ‘I have to keep cleaning, Shani, because dirty dishes cry.’
“We grew up together making roti and curries so the work is dyed with spices and oils. It’s a giant textile piece and has little buttons and sequins that people can touch.”
Assistant curator Lauren Bzowy’s work also delves into childhood, inspired by a nostalgic collection of farmyard toys, dinosaurs and Raggedy Ann dolls. “Her work has become all about being playful and she’s turned those things into big old paintings,” Engelbrecht says.
Billie Rasmussen will hold a junk texture printing workshop, exploring how discarded items can be repurposed, in addition to presenting two large-scale print works. “Like me, she will look at something on the ground and go ‘I need that’,” Engelbrecht says. “She’s using different images and objects to make an imagined scenario, and it’s all about her connections to place and her sense of identity.”
Memory through digital influence is photographer Cobie Sinclair’s theme, with Engelbrecht saying, “She recently lost someone so she’s looking at technology, the cloud as a symbol, and how photos are a relic.”
Meanwhile, the exhibition’s hero image is of a hand-built candelabra created by Holly Phillipson, who is focused on portals, ring shapes and passages through time and history. “I am always so enamoured by Holly’s work,” Engelbrecht says. “It’s elegant yet soft and quiet but grandiose. I wanted something that was quiet but confident in how it spoke.”
It’s the perfect metaphor for a relic – a wise, ever-present foundation stone, at the centre of who we are and guiding who we become.
RELICS, Light Square Gallery, 5 Feb-5 Mar, 5.30pm; Printing Sustainably Workshop, 12 Feb, 1pm; Guided Tactile Tour, 27 Feb 1pm