Sayre Gomez in Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter

‘Home’ is a small and familiar word that carries a live load of meaning. We think we know what is meant when we hear it. But the term trembles with pressure. Whose home is in question? Who shares that space? How is the sense of home measured? Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter reveals what 29 artists from Australia and farther afield have made of the idea of home. For these artists, home is not only a house or a place, it’s also memories, people – and stories.

Set across a series of rooms, the exhibition itself forms a house of dreams in which locations and timeframes are always shifting. The artists take us to Cape Town, Los Angeles, Fitzroy Crossing; into living rooms, disaster zones and vast landscapes. Evocations of intimacy and sanctuary give way to visions of loss and upheaval, followed by projections of rebuilding and reconnection. Here art-making is a form of critical dreaming, a grounded way of imagining otherwise in unstable times.