This exhibition focuses on small domestic objects that are part of daily life. They are a mixture of functional and non-functional items; precious in terms of memories, they are keepsakes, souvenirs, some are whole and some just fragments.
Naomi Zouwer is a Canberra based, cross-disciplinary artist. She works across drawing, painting and textiles mediums making works that engage with ideas of cultural heritage, identity and the social role of personal objects. Zouwer has exhibited widely in Australia being selected for drawing, painting and textile awards and exhibitions, including the Lethbridge Small Scale Award, 2018, the Kate Derum Tapestry Prize, 2016, the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award, 2015, the M16 Drawing Prize,2015 and the ANU School of Art and Design Drawing Prize, 2014. Zouwer recently completed a practice-led PhD at the School of Art and Design at the ANU.
In Search of Lost Time takes its name from of Proust’s novel À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, similarly exploring memory and time. For the works in the exhibition Zouwer has drawn on the traditions of still life painting and embroidery to explore the relationship of family keepsakes to ideas of time, memory and identity. Zouwer examines how seemingly trivial objects and curios can simultaneously connect to both past and present.
This exhibition focuses on small domestic objects that are part of daily life. They are a mixture of functional and non-functional items; precious in terms of memories, they are keepsakes, souvenirs, some are whole and some just fragments. Zouwer’s painting of objects enhances their quality and raises their status so that they become worthy of sustained attention.
‘I reinterpret these trivial objects through painting and textiles as signifiers of belonging to more than one place. They simultaneously bridge the void between past and present, enchant us and elaborate on human behaviour. My work brings together seemingly incompatible objects from different times and places into a heterotopic space. Bringing objects together in this way changes the meaning of the individual object and envisages them anew. They become a hybrid object.’
Naomi Zouwer is a Canberra based, cross-disciplinary artist. She works across drawing, painting and textiles mediums making works that engage with ideas of cultural heritage, identity and the social role of personal objects. Zouwer has exhibited widely in Australia being selected for drawing, painting and textile awards and exhibitions, including the Lethbridge Small Scale Award, 2018, the Kate Derum Tapestry Prize, 2016, the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award, 2015, the M16 Drawing Prize,2015 and the ANU School of Art and Design Drawing Prize, 2014. Zouwer recently completed a practice-led PhD at the School of Art and Design at the ANU.
In Search of Lost Time takes its name from of Proust’s novel À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, similarly exploring memory and time. For the works in the exhibition Zouwer has drawn on the traditions of still life painting and embroidery to explore the relationship of family keepsakes to ideas of time, memory and identity. Zouwer examines how seemingly trivial objects and curios can simultaneously connect to both past and present.
This exhibition focuses on small domestic objects that are part of daily life. They are a mixture of functional and non-functional items; precious in terms of memories, they are keepsakes, souvenirs, some are whole and some just fragments. Zouwer’s painting of objects enhances their quality and raises their status so that they become worthy of sustained attention.
‘I reinterpret these trivial objects through painting and textiles as signifiers of belonging to more than one place. They simultaneously bridge the void between past and present, enchant us and elaborate on human behaviour. My work brings together seemingly incompatible objects from different times and places into a heterotopic space. Bringing objects together in this way changes the meaning of the individual object and envisages them anew. They become a hybrid object.’
