Anna Moimoi
Westminster: Blanket, Taro
annamoimoi.com
Objects As Placeholders
This ceramic installation: Westminster: Blanket, Taro explores concepts of familial relationships and sites with a focus on my grandfather’s house, affectionately named Westminster after the road it sits on. Blanket and Taro act as representations of this site, which has housed my extended family since the 1950s. These objects indicate the body’s ability to experience two things at once: comfort and discomfort, closeness and distance, comings and goings. In the same way that objects within the home – plates, blankets, food, and pictures – act as placeholders for times that have passed, Blanket and Taro are placeholders for my experience living in Westminster.
The weightiness of Blanket incites both feelings of comfort and discomfort, mirroring the experience of the nearness of living in a family home, coupled with the distance of living there without my grandfather. Sunday lunch always included taro, which became a witness to the comings and goings of Westminster. These seemingly mundane comings and goings are what makes Westminster feel familiar and homely, they are marks in our family history and Westminster is the site where we have grounded these markings.
By adopting the aesthetics of a crochet blanket, Westminster: Blanket, Taro explores the connection to hand-crafted objects found in homes. The similarities are found in its final object’s aesthetic, and in the way it was created: by hand, with time, repetition and committed labour. The persistent labour that was required to create this work mirrors the ways my grandfather has persisted and remained in this house despite factors such as gentrification, time and loss and what this has meant for our family.
All of my grandfather’s children and grandchildren have lived in this house with him. The work Taro mirrors the time that each of us have been held by my Grandfather in Westminster. Whereas Blanket is held together by rings, Taro is held together by a crochet bag. The set of conditions in which the materials and processes operate are indicative of the centrality of my familial relationships. Each object, while perhaps mundane in nature, represents the complexity of living in a family home.
