Opening 5.30 – 7.30pm Friday 24 October
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard wrote, “in order to sense, across the years, our attachment for the house we were born in, dream is more powerful than thought.” This idea forms the conceptual foundation of The Tonality of Home, an exhibition that explores the emotional resonance of early domestic spaces and the way memory distorts, intensifies, or softens our perception of them over time.
Material exploration underpins the artists’ practice. Fossicked offcuts and found objects – fragments of past use and forgotten purpose – are combined with refined surfaces to evoke the layered nature of memory. Rich timber, worn textures, and patinated materials become vessels for nostalgia, echoing the quiet erosion and accumulation that occurs as spaces age and stories settle into their corners.
Drawing on Bachelard’s theory that “memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality of those of home,” the works consider how places once associated with safety and belonging become more vivid in recollection, especially during times of uncertainty. Perspective is impermanent – shaped by emotion, experience, and the changing conditions of our time.
Through material and memory, The Tonality of Home invites viewers to reflect on the spaces that shaped them, and the dream-like fidelity with which those spaces continue to live in us.
BIO
Jenny Gill Schirmer is an emerging artist whose practice explores a connection between found objects and deliberately formed materials to conjure elusive memories of time or place.
Jenny graduated from the Byron School of Art in 2021, receiving the Northern Rivers Community Gallery Graduate Award. She has held solo exhibitions at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery (2022, 2024) and the Byron School of Art Project Space (2024) She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including BSA-10 at Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah and Echo at Side Gallery, Brisbane and the Brisbane Grammar School Art Show, Brisbane. Jenny was a finalist in the Byron Art Magazine Art Prize in 2023.
Jenny lives and works in Lennox Head, Northern NSW.