Shacks

In 2021 I held an open studio and exhibition of recent work for South Australian Living Artists (SALA).

I had moved to the southern coast only a year previously, into a ’60s beach shack, and I wanted to make a homage to shack life.

Dwellings are a container and shelter for all that we treasure – our lives, loved ones and belongings – and each shack is a whimsical response to beach-side living. They all have removable roofs, and each shack is also a jewellery box. Placing your treasured jewel inside is symbolically arriving home.

Shacks are predominantly wooden, and simple in construction. Being along the coast they are subjected to salt and wind and summer sun. They fade and peel and sometimes leak. And we love them.

I raised them up on long legs, impossible stilts, to elevate them and give them the presence that, in real life, they do not need. They stand tall and proud in their wooden skin and TV antennas.

At the end of SALA I made one more shack. Then I held a ritual shack burning, symbolically closing the exhibition.