Moving Home
Moving Home is an ongoing body of work that explores themes of belonging, displacement and migration through the physical relocation of a Queenslander house from Brisbane, Australia to Eindhoven, The Netherlands. By dissecting the home’s function as a dwelling, an artifact, and a symbol of white settler identity, the project engages with contemporary dialogues on colonial legacy, housing accessibility, immigration, and place.
The Queenslander is a symbol of belonging in Australia, even as it is a symbol of incongruence, as it both blends into and stands out against the landscape. By bringing it into a European urban environment, its incongruence becomes stark. It belongs neither here nor there, yet the house itself embodies a very real sense of identity to a lot of Australians, regardless of cultural or ethnic background. At its core, this project is an attempt at a different approach for the way we talk about identity and belonging in this country. Those dedicated to a more radical application of decolonisation are divided against disenfranchised non-indigenous Australians, and the division is only getting wider. Here, a kind of 'what are we supposed to do, pack up home and go back to Europe?' sentiment is taken literally, through the uprooting of a Queenslander house and its subsequent relocation by land and sea to Holland. The house becomes a kind of third space where Australians from all backgrounds can coexist and share experiences, express differences, and ultimately unite together under new modes of belonging.
The outcome is polycomponent and manifests as performance, film, and exhibition. The monumental relocation of the house as situated within the tradition of large scale moves, documented through a film to be premiered within the house upon completion of the move. In this way the house is not only the subject of the story, but the interface through which the story is received.
An exhibition will host works from two parallel conversations: one about belonging in Australia, the other about belonging in the Netherlands, particularly within the Dutch Design Industry. As the percentage of non-Dutch practitioners within the community expands, ideas around the nature of ‘Dutch Design’ metabolise and are replaced with urgent inquiries into immigration, legal status and cultural identity.
The two contexts are linked not only by their colonial histories, but through my personal connection to them. Having been involved in various protests against the notorious multiple occupancy permit wreaking havoc on the already exacerbated housing crisis in the Netherlands, my aim in reaching back towards Queensland is to find the homegrown policies (shareholder satisfaction, negative gearing, equity inflation) causing the down surge in housing accessibility, to examine the two against each other and visualise where we are through accessible means.
Moving Home captures a contemporary iteration of monumental relocation, drawing parallels between historical migration and today’s globalised world. Through collaboration, storytelling, and artistic craftsmanship, Moving Home asserts Brisbane’s cultural significance in an international context while interrogating the very nature of dwelling and belonging.