Imprint

Imprint reflects the exploration in my photographic practice of imaging the imprint of life and living on our domestic and built environments and continues to explore issues of home, place and displacement.

Some of the images shown here are from the Relocated Arts Project at the Kensington Public Housing Estate in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. Myself and a writer were based on the Estate for a period of 18 months to document the shifting dynamics of the Estate and the tenants as over 1000 families were relocated and the Estate gradually demolished as families were moved and people waited to be moved. Many families had lived within the community for over 30 years and were subsequently relocated to the isolating outer suburbs of Melbourne. Many of the vacant flats were ready for demolition, abandoned by tenants and stripped of essentials – some of the images here reflect that stillness.

The discarded buildings and empty interiors evoke a sense of a once inhabited place and yet reflect a mood of loneliness that was evident as the community were gradually displaced.

Within our environment we make marks, arrange mementos, position family photographs to imprint ourselves on the physical environment and to connect ourselves to the spaces we inhabit. The image 1000 paper cranes was the only remaining element in one of the abandoned flats – cleaned and empty except for the curtain of handmade origami cranes strung across the windows.

The work mattresses, is a further examination photographing the many remnants of what we leave behind and discard. The mattress is often the only item left on the streets for collection - instantly recognisable as too personal a possession and encased in a private history. A discarded mattress often symbolises homelessness, the imprint of a body, the stains of fluid, ripped and worn patches – the hidden stories.

The images of discarded mattresses were photographed over a period of three days in the back streets of inner Melbourne – scouring the streets, the process was intensive and rapid, photographing close/up the generic patterning, colours and designs, similar and unremarkable, a stain sometimes disrupting this mundanity.

The images in Imprint invite the viewer to consider the diaspora of movements between social space and place within the urban environment and how we inhabit and locate ourselves within this.