Home – Albury Museum Library and Gallery Project
In November 2010, Barking Spider Visual Theatre went to Albury Museum Library and the Albury Art Gallery, to develop and present a project based around the theme of “Home”. “Home” was inspired by the Albury Museum collection and by an the Albury Gallery exhibition of a series of etchings “Los Caprichos” by late 18th Century Spanish artist Francisco Goya.
The thinking behind the project.
The inspiration and principle behind “Home” was to engage young people through creativity in a topic that is of great historical significance and also contemporary relevance to the City of Albury and to ourselves as a nation – The topic of Migration.
Albury is a town with a long history of immigration: from the original migrant settlements at Bonegilla after World War Two, to current waves of immigrants from Africa, the Middle east and Asia. The initiating idea behind using the theme of “Home” was to have primary school aged children explore on what the meaning of “Home” is. Also, Albury has a large local indigenous population: many indigenous children were part of the project. Uprootedness from “Home” had great relevance to this population, and a weighty meaning with it. The topic had a great many differing meanings and implications, depending upon the individual’s experience and perspective.
How was this handled?
Through their schools, children were prompted with a series of questions around the theme: What does “Home” mean? How does the notion of home change when circumstances change? What happens when you leave your home – If you were to:
Move to a new house
Move to a the country
Move to a town
Move to a new town
Move to a new State
Move to a new Country
Then children were asked: Has anyone’s family had this experience? What objects did you or family take with you? What objects did you or family leave behind? What memories can you think of or share on this topic? Children worked together to unpack these themes and share experiences and thoughts.
What did the children experience at “Home”?
In the library area of the building, after playing some warm-up games, we began with a discussion about the meaning of what home is.
“Home is the smell of my dad’s work shirt” Angela, 9
“Home is my 5 annoying brothers and sisters” Minerva, 6
“Home is small of lavender my mum puts around the house and my cats” Todd, 8
“Home is yummy food – like pie!” Mischka, 7
Story
Following the discussion, the children, guided by Penelope Bartlau, Artistic Director of Barking Spider Visual Theatre and performer, together began to weave a fantastical narrative about the notion of home. At the story’s conclusion, playing theatre games, the children made their way through the library and into the immigration exhibition in the Museum. This exhibition is very engaging for children: numerous suitcases are interior-lit and filled with various objects brought into Australia from other countries. The children explored the suitcases, and then we moved to the art room, to create our own 2D suitcases using pastels, crayons, charcoal, and liberal additions chaos and imagination! Have a look at the gallery of images of the children’s work – it’s very inspired and beautiful.
From the art making, we ventured to art gazing (and exploring), taking in the works of Goya. We talked about and the techniques Goya used to create the etchings, why he used certain mark-making or chose certain light, and how this made us feel as we viewed the work. We observed on work in particular, “And so was his Grandfather” from the series “Los Caprichos”.
From this work, the children were engaged in creating a story based around their feelings, understanding and observations of the artwork, and guided to think about this in relation to the theme of “Home”.
“Home” was liberation of the imagination, and engendered a great sense of play and new ways to think about art, about story and about what “home” can mean.
