Queenslea

At Queenslea, the artwork is woven into the very fabric of the building, and its subject is the feeling of home. Made for an aged care community, the two-part work draws its patterns from the domestic world its residents grew up in: the pressed metal ceilings of Federation houses, the diamond lattices of decorative brickwork, the crocheted blanket squares and knitted textures of handmade things. These are patterns that carry memory in them, familiar before they are decorative, and here they are returned at the scale of architecture, wrapping the building the way a blanket wraps a shoulder.

The concept began with a simple question: what does familiarity look like? For this generation of residents, the answer lives in the crafted surfaces of the homes of their earlier years, in hearth and kitchen, wool and brick, ornament made by hand and pattern made by repetition. Rather than asking residents to adapt to a new and neutral place, the artwork brings the textures of remembered places to them, offering reassurance, fondness and warmth as material qualities rather than words.

The first part of the work is cast into the building itself. Precast concrete facade panels carry a brick-like relief, its diamond crisscross pattern inspired by the ornamental brickwork typical of the era of the residents' youth. From a distance the panels read as patterned masonry rising through the upper storeys; as the sun moves, the relief catches and releases shadow, so the pattern deepens, fades and returns across the day.

At ground level, the second part of the work plays a quieter trick. The lower brick walls are laid with each brick angled in a V-shaped pattern, and a penetrating stain is applied directionally across the folded surface. The combination creates a lenticular effect: approached from one direction the wall holds one tone and pattern, from the other direction another, and the two readings slide continuously into each other as you walk past. Nothing moves, yet the wall is never still. It is the same play of light, shadow and viewer motion that runs through all of the artists' work, here softened to walking pace for a place where walks are daily rituals.

The result is an artwork that does not announce itself. It works the way home works: through familiarity, texture and quiet variation, the diamond of a crocheted square meeting the diamond of a garden wall, patterns from the past holding steady while the light keeps changing.