Six

Heritage is more than where we live or what we live in, but how and why we live that way.

Definitions of cultural heritage are highly varied. Heritage can be the product of a single person or a group of people-it can be personal or social. Regardless, I believe that fundamentally heritage whether it be property ('things'), or a social, intellectual, and spiritual inheritance, stories and oral history, language, both abstract and tangible memories, it is human actions, our ideas, customs and knowledge that are entwined within them and together create a social and cultural connectivity which is active and fluid.

I have always found the most revealing aspects of cultural heritage not in museums - where objects are catalogued, displayed, often cleansed of all but a couple of significant meanings - but in the living relationships that objects have in people’s lives and homes. Here they blossom through the most fascinating associations, based on a life lived through them or because of them.

A simple toy can be the most extraordinary biography of a life; a cup and saucer can have travelled through generations of change. The most humble of objects can be the most precious testament to who we are.

Chris Young has taken an intimate look at the personalities of a number of private homes within the City of Subiaco, to inform the artist in residence exhibition, Six.

Christopher Young’s photographs challenge the idea of value and social history museum expectation of displays featuring old, expensive, antique items belonging to luminaries. He has chosen utilitarian items whose value is derived from their Subiaco connection.

His images are personal and private. They quietly interpret the generally unknown layers and how they might influences the contemporary community makeup.

I have known Chris for a long time, I first saw his work in an Art Award and realised straight away that he had the innate ability to focus in on the essence of a scene, the philosophical acuity to support it and the technical aptitude to capture it, every time.

Chris is a very private person so I think this process of intimate engagement would have been a challenge for him, beyond the practicalities of taking the images. Chris was amazed and humbled by the welcome he received in developing this project. While it is not easy allowing a stranger into your home to explore the intimacy of your space, he was invited to work unsupervised, to do as he wished, almost without restriction and people were very open about more than just their houses. There are important stories in Six.

I hope this is one of many such exhibitions, where the personal, the local, the present and the past can come together, in new narratives, new approaches to story telling and build a strong, cohesive and proud community.

 

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