CELEBRATING the artistic community of the Goulburn Valley and Hume regions and offering local artists a chance to share their creativity with audiences alongside exhibitions by nationally recognised Australian artists, SAM Open 2023 draws together 83 submissions that uniquely address the all-embracing theme of ‘Home’.
SAM curator Caroline Esbenshade said of the exhibition, “With this year’s theme we wanted to invite the community members not only to show us their different creative expressions, but to encapsulate for us what home means for them.
“‘Home’ is something that everybody can connect to but will never be the same for everyone. It’s been exciting not only to see the variety of work as far as technique and style but also to see the unique representations of what home means to our community members.”
Fashia Batool’s submission, Fragile, entices deep reflection about the importance and often delicate nature of home and family with a hand-crafted bird’s nest, enveloped in bubble wrap and contained within a labelled cardboard box. Describing her metaphoric work Fashia said, “When I thought about the idea of home, I thought about how fragile it is, and if the people are in the family are not careful it is easily broken.”
Capturing the iconic game of backyard cricket in Australia, replete with laughter, camaraderie VB and buckets of KFC, Steve Nash’s painting, Backyard Cricket-Day 2 showcases the family tradition of a game of sport played at home during the festive season.
“Our homes are places to bring our friends and play sport, be it cricket or something else and it’s a bit of an institution.
“This piece is painted in naïve style, and I tried to tell multiple stories within it, focussing on the theme of home and backyard cricket,” Steve said.
SAM Open 2023: Home will be showing at Shepparton Art Museum until Sunday, July 16.
