Steven Durbach

This work looks at the ordinary household object.. a toaster an idyllic household item whose familiarity and function equate to an ideal of home.. if the toaster is as it should be.. life and home is at it should be. The Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht.. who saw his idea of home eroded by open pit coal mining in the Hunter region coined the term Solastalgia.. the idea that home can shift from under our feet in a changing ecological landscape. In these works the toasters – an icon of home – radically shift their idea of themselves… shaking what we need them to be.. they disrupt their domestic teleology albeit in a playful way and do not let us settle on an idea of what they should be suggesting to us that the nostalgic feeling we may hope for about the place of our belonging might be fraying and our species may as well reinterpret and come to terms with a new emerging narrative.