Souvenirs of the Modern World

In Souvenirs of the Modern World, Adrienne Richards and Peta Hinton explore the realm of the souvenir, where objects are valued for their connection to another time or place, and transported home as mementos. They may have intrinsic value or be symbolic and therefore without the owner’s accompanying narrative or provenance, the meaning may be lost to others.

Peta Hinton’s sculptures fuse her interpretations of living native plants observed in the landscape, with architectural elements remembered from the family home of her childhood. Objects such as decorative fences, air vents and doorknobs are common in houses of older suburbs and often include plant motifs in their designs. They occur where one space is separated from another and on the threshold of the interior and exterior.

The installation, ‘Fence’ reimagines the palisade fences found at the front of Victorian terraces, typically adorned with decorative cast-iron finials. Peta’s sculpted and painted tops reference Australian botanical life forms and collectively the group touches on ideas around ownership, property and territory in a colonised land.

In her ongoing series of goblets and wall vases, Adrienne Richards remembers the ceramics of her grandmothers’ china cabinets and cool dark pantries filled with colourful crockery and storage jars. She also reflects on human activities and our interactions with the natural world. Personal recollections of lyrebirds in the garden, a holiday campfire with family and seashells on a beach are interrupted by electricity towers, infrastructure and the 1970’s invention of the domestic sprinkler system. While planning this exhibition, playing with memories and the chemistry of glaze technology has been both a shield and a way of responding to the anxieties of world events as they have been unfolding.