The Night It All Went

Matzkuhn's series of images in fibre contemplate domestic disaster.  The broad theme of catastrophic change is applied to a small house.  It is subjected to explosion, flooding, dislocation and possible adaption to a new life underwater.  This symbol of comfort and sanctuary, or perhaps complacency, is unceremoniously swept away.

Much of her work deals with narrative.  Here, the viewer is invited to consider what precipitated these situations and what might be the outcome for the house –as a character, as a site, or as a container.  While she is presenting drastic changes, including global warming and extreme weather systems as part of a physical geography, they can also be taken as metaphors of more personal landscape.  Drastic change comes in many guises– we are subjected to emotional inundations and psychological firestorms.  The combination of domesticity with pathos is hardly new, but she is seeking to emphasize the irony of describing the dissolution of the familiar through a medium so intimately connected with it. Matzkun also finds a spirit of hope in the adaptability of fibre.

Read: Collection Connections - on care and healing through remembrance and art