Tai Snaith (Curator)

TAI SNAITH
(CURATOR)


WWW.TAISNAITH.COM.AU


LOUNGE ROOM


The lounge room of the Wrongtown house was based on an initial idea that grew from the existing name on the front of the house which reads 'Withens.' After researching this name I found it refers to an old ruin of a farmhouse in the british countryside from which Emily Bronte famously found inspiration for the Earnshaw family farmhouse in her classic novel Wuthering Heights.

Reminding me of the novel as well as so many famous approprations (cue Kate Bush and appropriate dancing)- I couldn't think of a more deliciously 'wrong' starting point.

The lounge room pays homage to this superbly bitter, supernatural romance and predominantly to the female energies of the novel. Cathy's ghost lingers spitefully above the fireplace and is accompanied by a menagerie of fierce female creatures painted on the surrounding walls; a protective hunting bitch and her suckling pups and a giant hissing pussy (cat).

Along the window sill I recreated Cathy's incessant scratching of her possible family names and identity crisis' (Earnshaw, Linton or Heathcliff) next to a dog-earned pile of hard cover classics. The rest of the room is adorned with an assortment of psychedelic kitsch objects; brightly painted pine cones by the fire, crocheted rugs in clashing wools and spilling vases of dead daffodils- almost as if her ghost got even angrier and decided to come back in the future as a raging feminist crafter.


Photograph: Sophie Neate

Photograph: Theresa Harrison

                                           













Photograph: Theresa Harrison
Photograph: Theresa Harrison