Etiquette for the Homesick: Genevieve Packer & Caroline McQuarrie

2 May - 8 June 2008 in the Hirschfeld Gallery

Etiquette, the study of good manners and the conventions governing social conduct may seem outmoded in a contemporary living room or gallery. Yet our expectations of the decorative and the domestic are often aligned assumptions about ‘good behaviour’ when we encounter craft-based art and design. Approaching works which seem to belong in the home, we tend to consider their outward appearance or use-value, as if these alone dictate their proper place. ‘Etiquette for the Homesick’ suggested the decorative in fact has another and a darker face, the potential to act as a guise for deeper resonances. Here ‘home-sick’ acted as a pun on itself, invoking both the feelings of separation anxiety experienced by some away from home, and a rebellion against the confinement of these objects to a domestic realm.

Genevieve Packer and Caroline McQuarrie’s work investigates personal investment in objects of display. In Packer’s work this took the form of designs which allude to both private and collective acts of nostalgia or loneliness. Selected works from her graduate show, ‘Wish You Were Here’, address the ‘souvinering’ of familiar objects and motifs: the milk crate, a stylised landscape, a fantail. What is considered quintessentially ‘New Zealand’ is concentrated in an object which may be worn, collected, or used to create an environment in the home or non-public space.

In Caroline McQuarrie’s work the gothic, the un-pretty, the brutality involved in some acts of craft is invoked, and objects become markers of the deeply un-ordinary. McQuarrie’s series A Singularity (2007) uses family portraits as a background template for her cross-stitching with tapestry wool, literally ‘sewing her family together’. How to Fight Loneliness (Just Smile All the Time) (2007 - present) combines textile and photography to create photograms, where an image of a past home of the artist is paired with a (crafted) image of her family from the same period. The ‘genre piece’ of art historical narrative is cleverly re-framed, the relationships between people and places tinted with darkness.

Genevieve Packer and Caroline McQuarrie are both graduates of Wellington’s Massey University School of Creative Arts. Caroline completed a BFA (Photography) at Canterbury University in 1997, before gaining her Masters (Fine Arts) in Wellington, where she currently tutors in photography. Her recent show ‘Call and Response’, Toi Poneke Gallery, Wellington (2007), featured some work which is shown in ‘Etiquette for the Homesick’. Genevieve Packer holds a Bachelor of Design degree, and completed her Masters (Design) in 2007. She is a Wellington-based textile designer.