These paintings are related to my large sculpture ‘Heart is Where the Home is’ as they’re concerned with some of the emotional and psychological experience of migration. They’re inspired by my great-grandparents arriving in London in the late 1800’s as Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe; by my own migration from England to New Zealand; and express some shared feeling with migrants and refugees generally.
All oils on canvas. Can hang from eyelets with/without dowel rod (supplied). $500 each.
‘Moving’ uses a very mundane word as the tile. This could be simply an action, or be about moving house. But it also suggests the plight of boat people.
‘In the past darkly’ refers to the mysterious and unknown origins and circumstances of my own and others’ ancestors when they have moved from one place to another to escape varying degrees of discrimination or persecution
‘Migration’ is more specific about me looking back to the lives of my ancestors and also forward to my life in New Zealand, on the upside down side of the planet!
‘The self inside’ is about the need to feel at home within oneself wherever one lives. This is not the only work I’ve made about that concept.
In 2009, I made these paintings as stretched canvases 3ft x 4ft. They had the same titles and were about the same things. In 2020, I cut those canvases up and reorganised the pieces, adding small amounts of extra oil paint. I believe these versions work much better compositionally. They also say more about displacement and about putting pieces of lives back together differently. And they are part of my continuing quest to reuse objects or previous work for environmental reasons.