Recollecting Home

Section of the Home: A Suburban Obsession exhibition

Recollecting Home was made up off 11 curated sets of photographic images that showcased 490 photos from the Corley Collection and new photography. These were supported by a series of cabinets housing related imagery, ephemera and publications sourced from SLQ, other public institutions, and private collections.

The panels explored a number of research themes. These included:

• “Artists in the Suburbs,” which delved into a selection of parallel explorations of man-made environments by artists from across the globe including the German photographers Bernd and Hilda Becher, the American artists Ed Ruscha and Todd Hido, and Australian photographers John Gollings and Tracey Moffat (whose 2008 image First Jobs: Selling Aluminium Siding is based on an image from the Corley Collection and which captures residential housing in the Brisbane suburb of Norman Park; attributes associated with the “Queensland house,” including “screening,” “under the house,” and “open windows” and which speak of lifestyles and modes of living peculiar to the Queensland state
   
• “Not the Queensland House,” a set of images which highlight the diversity of forms and materials that contribute to the complexity of the Queensland suburb
   
• “Suburbs in Transition,” a series of photographs which capture moments of change in Queensland’s suburbs of the 60s and 70s and which begin to highlight some of the distinctions (real and imagined) between “old” and “new” suburbia.

New photography by Paul Dielemans extended these observations into the present day. Digital stories and supporting displays that tell the real-life stories of occupants of homes found in the Corley Collection completed the sequence.