Your Dream Home Awaits You: Engaging with People and Place through Painting in an Australian Public Housing Precinct Undergoing Renewal

Abstract

This article presents an example of how convergent art–anthropology methodologies provided insights into the concepts of house and home in a large public housing precinct scheduled for demolition. Drawing is discussed as both a means to experience embodied understandings of place, as well as a method for initial engagement with the residents of the housing precinct. A series of oil paintings are presented, along with an exegetical discussion of how the paintings elicited ongoing conversations and interviews. The research process demonstrates how the artworks produced became a point of discussion, around which entangled emotions of anxiety could be expressed, as people were relocated to replacement housing. The final paintings aim to offer the residents and broader community an alternative representation of the houses, as a platform to consider the issues of housing affordability, gentrification and homelessness in our cities.