Remember Rebecca Lewis? She merges creativity and community in her playful and inventive art projects, which are made exclusively from second-hand and recycled materials.
When we last chatted, she was preparing her first solo exhibition, an endeavour both terrifying and electrifying. After months of research, preparation and creative frenzy, Little Histories is ready to go and will run until the 14th of September! Head to the Project Gallery at QCA (Southbank) for a taste of what this highly talented and imaginative artist has to offer.
Little Histories is an exploration of the local, daily and real lives of five Queensland families. The show documents those tales that are passed down through generations and which are part and parcel of the very fabric of the land, although they mostly go untold, and forgotten.
Weaving together the small threads of little family histories, Rebecca is giving them their place in the broader tapestry of South East Queensland and its rich past. What she found through her interviews was a community with strong links to each other and to the land.
She has genuinely enjoyed the whole creative process. “The best thing that’s come out of it has been finding even more connections between the families I featured in the work, which speaks to me so much about community and our links to where we live.”
The idea for Little Histories was actually born over twenty years ago. Rebecca interviewed her great-grandmother for a school project and discovered whole episodes of family history that she had previously been entirely unaware of.
One such event was the murder of her great-grandmother’s sister. Upon mentioning her great-grandmother’s story to a friend who happened to work in the QLD State Archives, Rebecca actually found a write-up of the 1927 event! The archives also held the watercolour map depicting investigative details like the location of the revolver, and news clippings from the time of the murder – the perfect example of how ‘little’ histories affect and shape whole communities.
Today’s exhibition is the culmination of interviews with friends and their relatives. Rebecca worked with them throughout the creative process to produce visual, tangible and multi-dimensional representations of their collective memories.
Featuring a technique called locative collage, Little Histories is a juxtaposition of genuine family photos and miniature lino-print replicas of their homes, photographed together outdoors. The effect is both nostalgic and joyful, pulling you into the fragmented details that together make up a community’s history.
Each image is accompanied by a story narrated by a family member, immersing you into the tiny joys, the little tears, the trivial things that make us all human. The audio is available at www.thelittlebrowndogworkshop.com/little-histories with a thumbnail of each image.
In line with Rebecca’s environmental ethos, the prints are created using local and reclaimed materials. Rebecca’s friends have all been on a lookout mission for months, keeping their eyes open for frames in op-shops and vintage stores!
Check out Rebecca’s Instagram page for sneak peeks of the show (https://www.instagram.com/littlebrowndog/) then take yourself down to Southbank to see Queensland, community and history in a whole new light!
