Zoe Spence

NOT AT HOME.

Moving into a new house and leaving your childhood home is a confusing and unsettling time. I wanted to capture the relationship I am making with a new space. My family has lived in our previous house for fifteen years. I felt like I had a deep connection with the space and now after leaving, my new environment felt cold and distant. I wanted to capture this emotion through my photography but found a feeling of nostalgia was more prominent. During the move we had time to filter through artefacts we had brought to Australia after my grandparents passed away. My mother’s side of the family is from Michigan, USA. During Covid my grandfather passed so we couldn’t attend the funeral. The next time we were able to visit the States once travel was re-opened, we were able to bring home artefacts of my grandparents in an effort to stay connected with them. I found that after the move, more of their things were being displayed when previously they were in storage. It is an immensely strange thing to move countries away from family but to now own elements of their lives in Australia, in a house they would have never visited or seen felt unnatural but sentimental. I feel like parts of my childhood are on display in a way that it wasn’t in our last house. The nostalgia feels like a part of my identity. Being so far away from family means holding on to memorabilia, and it is important to feel connected. I believe through moving and experiencing this unnatural change we found comfort in old memories. In my work, I explore the feeling of displacement during a major change. How moving into a foreign space brought back memories from home. This may be connected to my feeling of not entirely belonging in Australia.