"I scath a chéile a mhaireann na daoine / It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
Old Irish saying
Shelter Object borrows its name from the concrete structure built to encase part of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, following the disaster of 1986. Its purpose was to seal the plant’s most dangerous areas, preventing radioactive contamination of the environment, keeping the poison from coming out.
‘Shelter Object’ has an unusual structural composition – Weet-bix bricks. They have been crushed, mixed with glue and cast in molds. Our ‘national foodstuff’ is presented to us now as the ubiquitous house brick, some identifiable as convict bricks from NSW and the famous Canberra red brick.
The cereal will never be looked at in the same way again, nor will its sunny jingle. A brick is a symbol of order and progress, containment and control. Aussie kids are Weet-bix kids. Is this how we identify ourselves? Does it fit who we really are? Has it ever? The constructed identity, like the constructed wall, is divisive and resistant to change, breeding intolerance, fear and protectionism, obfuscating truth. For everything a wall keeps out, be it real or perceived, something else is kept in.
‘Shelter Object’ embodies mainstream ideals of security, unpicking a desire for safety sought out and clung to as a by-product of fear and distrust; safety in numbers, safety in conformity and alignment with approved archetypes. The illusion of safety is an illusion in and of itself, meanwhile suspicion and fear balloon unchecked behind closed walls, isolated from external influences. Which threat is more real, more damaging?
Only by relinquishing fear and suspicion are we open to creating meaningful connections; by reaching out our hands to a stranger we can build something truly strong.
-this is an edited version of the catalogue essay written by Yolande Norris
photography by Kelly Sturgiss
cast weetbix, varnish, PVA
