Neighbours
Neighbours explores themes of desire, social progression, and access. The work consists of two houses formed from metal frames and clad with a calico fabric, linked via an astroturf garden to which only one house has access. The artwork encourages interaction, allowing viewers to become temporary inhabitants of the houses and experience how the imbalance of garden access affects the feeling of being in each space. Through this work, Rebecca hopes to ignite discussions about the structure of our communities and the impact that architecture and land divisions have on them.
This work originated via an exploration into class divides in cities and urban suburbs. Interested in the juxtapositioning of housing in these areas; noting how it is not uncommon to live beside someone way above your wealth, acknowledging these differences but not sharing wealth or equity. This form of community is something that seems to have only emerged in recent decades - through reaching a point where housing is increasingly expensive and central locations are ever more attractive. Low-income households are being displaced to enable the introduction of wealthier clientele. In the midst of this process, a curious juxtaposition is formed, rich and poor on each others' doorsteps but fated to never integrate. For now, these unlikely neighbours are forced to look at each other and simply imagine.
Neighbours has also come to reflect the artist's personal experience. Rebecca's parents were next-door neighbours when they met, at ages 11 and 14. Her grandparents lived as neighbours all their life until they passed. She has an illustration of their houses framed in her current home as a reminder of a time when her family built itself around a centre point. Rebecca's family have been forced to move home multiple times in recent years due to financial struggles; she and her mum are currently being evicted from the home where they spent the last three years - the last years they had with her dad and their dog who both passed away in February. This work not only reflects the housing struggles faced by low-income families like her own but more broadly depicts the idea of longing for a past life, perhaps in a past home, looking back at it through a window, unable to access it fully. More personally Neighbours depicts the artist's yearning for the way things were.