The Housing Question: Winter Exhibition Suite at Penrith Regional Gallery

Penrith Regional Gallery, Home of the Lewers Bequest announces its next major Winter
Exhibition Suite, The Housing Question, opening 22 June and running until 25 August 2019.

The Housing Question is at the heart of what it means for people to live with security, and in
safety. An extensive multi-art form exhibition comprising video, photography, sculpture and
installation from artists Helen Grace, Narelle Jubelin and sound artist Sherre DeLys, the
exhibition begs the question: what are one’s rights to secure and affordable housing,
especially when one is displaced, as hundreds of thousands of people are today?

Grace and Jubelin explore these contemporary social and political issues in a major new 27-
minute collaborative video, which will be projected onto a large screen, on a loop, in the
Main Gallery.

Guest-curated by Julie Ewington, The Housing Question starts with two exemplary
modernist homes; Harry and Penelope Seidler’s house in Sydney’s Killara (1967) and Casa
Huarte (1966) in Madrid, Spain by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún.

The focus on the two houses leads to considering modernist town planning and mass
housing more generally, as well as the role of social housing and urgent issues surrounding
access to shelter.

The two houses are contemporary statements in modernist architecture, built thousands of
kilometres apart in two different nations and political circumstances. Yet despite their
dissimilar contexts, all the architects shared globally influential aspirations to assist in the
creation of more equitable and widely available housing in their home countries.

Additional works by Narelle Jubelin and Helen Grace draw on longstanding interests in their
own separate domestic histories, and are interwoven throughout the various rooms at the
gallery; they comprise photographs, videos and sculptures from 1979 to 2016. Based on
photographic imagery, Grace and Jubelin explore wider social narratives in the
contemporary world and examine the intimate experiences of home and family.

Rich in historical imagery and intimate photo-documentation, [footage of both houses,] The
Housing Question connects broad social issues with the personal and emotional impact of
modern and contemporary ideas about house and home, offering a sustained consideration
of the complexities of housing and home, safety and security.

penrithregionalgallery.com.au/the-housing-question