HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” - Edith Sitwell

For our annual Winter Solstice exhibition we are focusing on the idea of home. Our artitsts explore what home means to them, especially now that most of us are spending much more time there to protect ourselves and those around us. We have isolated ourselves to protect our communities, coming together by staying apart.

Home is a caring place of nurture and solace; a place to recreate, procreate, eat, sleep and dream.  The fortunate live in a home with family, children, domestic workers, and pets. For the less fortunate ‘home’ is a figment of the imagination, a memory, or an aspiration.

The 2020 Covid19 message of ‘Stay at home and prevent the transmission of the virus’ recognises ‘homes’ as structures, each separate and contained.  Social interaction has been confined to prevent the transmission of the virus causing an increased focus of attention on the internet, social networking, and video chatting platforms. With our hearts and souls, many South Africans are at home preserving life while being grateful to those who sustain society and maintain the essential services.

The ancients knew the wisdom of the seasonal cycle of birth, life, and death.  June 21st, the mid-Winter Solstice is a time when nature replenishes itself, the old and fragile dies making way as new life begins to germinate and bud as the sun waxes and wanes. A metaphysical analogy of this cycle is explored in many myths and legends as the wise men through the centuries philosophised upon the existential meaning of life. Is home a pysical structure or is it where our hearts feel truly free and nurtured.

View a selection of works from the show below