The
Places
We
Call
Home
Commissioned by Stockland Merrylands, and created and facilitated by Melanie Muddle and Hannah Robinson, founders of And Then, A Social Arts Agency. Cover image, Jeyne Wade
Our sense of home is made of complex concrete and imaginary layers.
Home becomes the interface between ourselves and the world;
a space that conjures a feeling of belonging;
a symbol of the larger human experience,
of origin, identity, connection and community.
Through a selective mentorship and exhibition program eight emerging photographic artists with ties to Western Sydney were invited to explore their personal experiences of home.
This project brings together the work of Alessandra, Amy, Cass, Intwari, Jana, Jeyne, Saarah, and Tugba, photographers from diverse backgrounds, each with strong personal and familial connections to the Western Sydney region.
The resulting exhibition is a collection of 8 re-imagined tangible and intangible places. Places that have been deconstructed, pulled apart, looked at and examined from all angles and then put back together again. Places carefully reconstructed to display what lies at the heart.
It’s a close look at the things that make us feel at one with somewhere we are, or somewhere we have been. It’s a celebration of the places we all call home.
“The Places We Call Home” ignites the feeling of discovering a family photo album. It is filled with unseen, treasured memories of people and places, captured through the eyes of a loved one.”
Gillian Kayrooz,
Interdisciplinary Artist and Mentor, Living and Working on Dharug and Gadigal Lands
Read Gillian’s foreword here.
“We learn that just as our idea of the homegrown can be grounding, it can also represent the uplifting and weight of carrying these roots, to and from, place to place. Home is embedded in the images of people, places and objects, and these visual reminders are safety-pinned to us by loving hands to keep close and safe. These inter-generational gestures performed by our ancestor’s hands demonstrate a lifetime of care.”
Gillian Kayrooz,
Interdisciplinary Artist and Mentor, Living and Working on Dharug and Gadigal Lands
Read Gillian’s foreword here.
“What I love, and what continues to ground me to the suburbs I grew up in, is the recognition and familiarity that is shared between people who are from the Western suburbs. Encountering each other outside the area, such as at house parties, university or work, navigating alienating spaces - there is something about the identity of being from Western Sydney that makes you feel more at home with the person. An accented identity.
It’s something to connect over and with this small piece of information, you can have this exchange of “I see you”, and the experience of safety that comes from that. So, though I am from Campbelltown, and another might be from Casula, Merrylands, Penrith, Blacktown, there is this feeling - perhaps belonging, or something adjacent to it, of shared experience, of shared difference”
Cass Li,
Participating Artist, Film Maker and Writer
The Participating Artists
Alessandra Femenias
Amy Piddington
Cass Li
Ibrahim Intwari
Jana Ibrahim
Jeyne Asher
Saarah Hanif
Tugba Demir
Alessandra Femenias
Te quiero mucho
‘Te quiero mucho’ translates to ‘I love you so much’ in Spanish. It’s a phrase constantly said between my family members and me. My work is about those moments in between that tell you that you’re loved. The notion of home transcends the physical. For me, home is my mother picking me an orange from our tree in the backyard or my grandparents asking me if I have eaten. It’s spending hours in the pool with my cousins or listening to Spanish music as the sun goes down. I see glimpses of my childhood, my teenage self and my current self in the reflections of my home.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@alessarixs
Connection to Western Sydney
Greystanes, Dharug Country
Amy Piddington
Little Oak
‘There’s an oak tree on some land in Federal, planted there by my father. My parents had the intention of calling that home, but it wasn’t to be and soon after things fell apart. For an only child to separated parents, who moved often, home can be elusive. It’s both a place set in the past with a remembered person and an idea of a place in the hopeful future. What makes a home? To plant a tree in the earth, and let the roots sink in? To say, “here”?
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@amy.piddington
Website
amypiddington.com
Connection to Western Sydney
Earlwood, Bidgigal and Gadigal Lands
Cass Li
beaded distances
‘And it’s the boxes and bags that make you suddenly aware of their burden, you carry them across postcodes, blinking away scenes from a car window, disappearing as fast as the last four years, a distance swollen and soft with potentials collapses to meet you, a cool and uncoloured reality, you are on the doorstep of a new sharehouse, with strangers to make home with, leaving your mother for the second time.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@cass.hnrs
Connection to Western Sydney
Raised in, and whose family home remains, on unceded Dharawal country, Campbelltown.
Ibrahim Intwari
Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem
I would describe home to be a place and feeling that is loving and welcomes you with open arms. While creating this body of work, I wanted to share how welcoming and peaceful it has been revisiting the mosque after a couple of years away. Despite feeling lost for a long time, I still felt welcomed back into the Masjid like I was returning home. A place I felt at peace. A place of solitude.
Jana Ibrahim
Past is Present
Home stems from the story of my grandparents, of immigration, new beginnings and loss. These images represent elements of the past that have profound meaning and an ongoing legacy in my life. Here the past is blurred with the present.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@janaiphotography
Connection to Western Sydney
Merrylands, Dharug Country
Jeyne Asher
Everything Sings
Fabricated in the corners of my neighbourhood, these images aim to make eternal the fleeting moments of mysticism and haunting present throughout the mundane here. I’m not sure these feelings could ever be bottled, nor if they truly are eternal. So much magic in this place has already been warped and changed, knocked down and built up with a fresh coat of paint. And yet, I still see it in so much.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@plain_jeyne
Connection to Western Sydney
Fairfield, Dharug Country
Saarah Hanif
Swimming with Divine Feminine
I have always utilised my photography and being an artist as an instrument to convey my emotions and various messages involving being brown and a woman. I like to incorporate the everyday and simple expression within my work as a photographer. I work with people to portray themselves in posed yet candid images, a vulnerable look into who they are. To me, home is vulnerable and warm. This is a feeling that has taken much time to understand and come to. Home before seemed to be cold and blocked off for me. Now, there is no place like home. It is a space where I can come home to shelves of ceramic vases, numerous plants, all my little pets and bowls of mandarins. There is chaos, where I feel clutter around me so confusing yet comforting at the same time. Even with the chaos and this unwavering confusion, I still run home every time without hesitation.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@saarah.jpeg
Connection to Western Sydney
Born and living in Blacktown, Dharug Country
Tugba Demir
Red Bricks on Mascot Drive
Home isn’t one singular place, person or feeling; it is multiple places that are a symbol of my childhood, the relationships in which I find comfort and the moments of feeling content.
Read full artist statement here.
Instagram
@demirphotography
Connection to Western Sydney
Liverpool, Dharug Country
The Places We Call Home is a photo storytelling mentorship and exhibition program.
Commissioned by Stockland Merrylands, and created and facilitated by Melanie Muddle and Hannah Robinson, founders of And Then, A Social Arts Agency. You can have a peek behind the program and see how it all came together here.
Visit The Places We Call Home
The Community Entry of Stockland Merrylands has been transformed into an immersive exhibition
WHERE
Stockland Merrylands. 1 McFarlane Street, Merrylands NSW. Carpark Entry 3
FINDING THE PLACES WE CALL HOME
The exhibition is located on the lower ground floor at Carpark Entry 3, also referred to as the Community Entry. The easiest way to find the exhibition is to enter Stockland Merrylands on the ground floor. Walk towards Trims Fresh, near Coles on the Ground Floor. Walk between Joe’s Poultry and the coffee shop opposite towards the travelators. Take the travelator down and continue around to your left. Look for the dark green wall, you’ll see the beginning of the exhibition here. Walk through to the Community Entry and The Places We Call Home exhibition.
This map shows you where Joe’s Poultry is located. Walk between Joe’s Poultry and the coffee shop on the opposite corner towards the travelators.
WHEN
The exhibition was installed in July 2024 will remain in place for up to seven years.
QUESTIONS
Please contact And Then at hello@and-then.com.au
PROJECT INFORMATION
WHEN
The Places We Call Home is a photo-storytelling mentorship program created and facilitated by And Then. The project was commissioned by Stockland Merrylands and took place from June - December 2023.
WHERE
Western Sydney - specifically Merrylands and surrounding suburbs.
WHO
8 emerging photographic artists with strong ties to Western Sydney were selected to participate in The Places We Call Home.
Alessandra Femenias, Amy Piddington, Cass Li, Ibrahim Intwari, Jana Ibrahim, Jeyne Wade, Saarah Hanif and Tugba Demir undertook a mentoring program with photographers Melanie Muddle and Hannah Robinson. Together, through group workshops and one-on-one mentoring sessions the artists were supported to explore their unique lived experiences of the concept of ‘home’.
Special thanks to:
Josie Young for her art direction, design work and general brilliance.
Joni-Amelia Trevaskis (former National Place Making Manager, Stockland) for commissioning this important project and championing the continued investment in meaningful public art.
Gillian Kayrooz, (Western Sydney based interdisciplinary artist) for generously connecting with the artists, mentoring them and bringing her valuable local knowledge to the project. Thank you for crafting the beautiful exhibition foreword.
The Stockland Merrylands team for supporting this project.
WHY
Community is at the heart of this project. The Places We Call Home was commissioned by Stockland as part of their public art strategy to transform an area of Stockland Merrylands that is regularly used by locals as they transition from the car park to the Fresh Food area of the centre. Melanie and Hannah’s socially engaged approach to image-making ensured an open brief. They set about developing a mentoring program that engaged local emerging photographers, encouraging the development of diverse community stories, created from the perspective of those who have a deep connection to this part of Sydney.
The vision for this project is to empower people through creative expression (image making, exploration and reflection); to inspire a new way of seeing and understanding (within themselves and for others); that enable us (collectively) to appreciate and embrace diversity within our community.
The stories and remarkable visual pieces created through this project have transformed the Stockland Merrylands Community Entry - garnishing the walls with a resonant representation of the intersection of culture, identity and life.
HOW
The Places We Call Home is a bespoke community-based, photo-storytelling mentorship program created by and facilitated by And Then. This work was commissioned by Stockland Merrylands.
Through a selective mentorship and exhibition program eight emerging photographic artists with ties to Western Sydney were invited to explore their personal experiences of home. The 4-month program included a series of full-day workshops, online sessions and one-on-one mentoring.
The resulting exhibition is a collection of 8 re-imagined tangible and intangible places. Places that have been deconstructed, pulled apart, looked at and examined from all angles and then put back together again. Places carefully reconstructed to display what lies at the heart.
It’s a close look at the things that make us feel at one with somewhere we are, or somewhere we have been. It’s a celebration of the places we all call home.
AND THEN
“We learn that just as our idea of the homegrown can be grounding, it can also represent the uplifting and weight of carrying these roots, to and from, place to place. Home is embedded in the images of people, places and objects, and these visual reminders are safety-pinned to us by loving hands to keep close and safe. These intergenerational gestures performed by our ancestor’s hands demonstrate a lifetime of care.”
Gillian Kayrooz,
Interdisciplinary Artist and Mentor, Living and Working on Gadigal Lands