My Father's Houses Frances Mocnik University of New South Wales A

All My Father’s Houses Frances Mocnik University of New South Wales A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Fine Arts Art & Design University of New South Wales March 2015 ‘When you are older I will build you a house so that you will always have a place to live’. Ivan Mocnik This promise was repeated to me throughout my childhood. Delivered in lieu of a bedtime story, my parents and I would discuss in detail the house that I would one- day call home. After a lifetime of migration (voluntary and forced), the shelter of a home was my parent’s priority and dream. Unlike the bedtime story, reality took a tragic turn: ill health intervened and two deaths followed. While my house was never constructed, my father did build some sixty-odd houses within the Australian Capital Territory. These homes now stand quietly, their histories buried along with their footings. Personal stories of place and belonging weave in and around their construction; they frame my history and are the ghosts in my life. They anchor me as a draftsman’s plans do a house, and serve to give meaning to place that creates belonging. I am a builder’s daughter and these are my houses. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………...………………..…....... iv Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………….….... vi Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….….……. 1 Chapter 1 Place in the migrant image …………………………………………………….….... 4 Here was my home ………………………………………………………………….. 7 Safe as houses ……………………………………………………………….…….. 10 House of memory - the archive …..……………………………………………….. 14 Remembering and forgetting .……………………………………………………... 17 Chapter 2 Simryn Gill ……………………………….………………………………………...… 22 Anne Ferran ……………..……………………………..…….……………………... 27 Taryn Simon ...……………………………………………….……………………… 31 Chapter 3 Homework…………………………………………………………………………….. 34 Carry me home…………………………………………………….…………..…..… 41 All my father’s houses……….…………...……………………………………..…... 56 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….………….. 80 List of illustrations…………………………………………………………….………….. 83 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………….. 89 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...….. 98 iii Acknowledgements This work, like a family narrative, has involved many people. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Debra Phillips, for her unerring support, insightful advice and academic guidance. I would also like to thank Claire Thompson for lending her professional eye to editing my words. Geoffrey Kolts, Kylie Wingrave and Mark Sariban I thank for proofreading early drafts and sub-editing. To Alessandro, Darinka and Massimiliano Basegni I am grateful for their friendship, support and assistance with my work in Florence, Italy. Heartfelt thanks goes to my husband Lang Hames who has supported my academic endeavours and tolerated the absences that it has entailed. My final words of gratitude are reserved for my mum, Anna Mocnik, who has been the narrator and keeper of memories. In dedication and loving memory Paul Mocnik [1975 – 1999] Ivan Mocnik [1940 – 2007] iv Paul and Frances Mocnik, Canberra c1979 Photograph Ivan Mocnik v Abstract This research paper documents three bodies of work that comprise the studio component of my Master of Fine Arts (MFA): HomeWork (2011), Carry me Home (2011) and All my father’s houses: a catalogue by a builder’s daughter (2011 – 2014). The third work also lends its title, in part, to that of this paper – All My Father’s Houses. The works are underpinned by a personal family narrative that, used as a pivot, relates critical theories of place, memory, migration and the archive. Importantly, the relationship between these ideas and my creative practice is created through a personal history of migration, both voluntary and forced, historical and ongoing. This research was motivated by the actuality of loss and failure within private and public archives and the realisation that memory—and with it an important connection to place—will one day too, be lost. Provoked by these ideas, this work is a response to imagistic desires; it aims to translate experiences of memory into photographic form where, through representation, they can be possessed and made portable. Contingent on the unpacking of a mobile migrant journey, notions of home, how we establish it and our sense of belonging within it, are questioned and clarified. Woven through these discussions is Marc Augé’s notion of place as a geographically bounded site in the real world and Lucy Lippard’s emotionally invested theories of place and the local. I further explore the relationship between my mobile migrant experience and notions of place and home by linking to John Di Stefano’s suggestion that the concept of home might be best understood through the experience of journey. As a consequence of lost archives, this research has, by necessity, become a negotiation between memory, the archive, photography and place. Originating from a desire to give visual form to childhood memories, All my father’s houses: a catalogue by a builder’s daughter (2011-2014) proposes that photography can be used as a site for the production and representation of memory, one that is future-oriented and active in the construction of portable notions of place. vi Introduction ‘As a sense of the past is tied to a sense of place, so too is memory, particularly personal and autobiographical memory, similarly tied to place and location. Moreover, as memory is in turn tied, in certain important aspects, to narrativity, so the connection between memory and place is indicative of a parallel connection between place and narrative’.1 This thesis engages with theoretical debates on place, memory and migration. It connects these theories to a photographic archival practice that explores the role of public and private archives in the formation of memory and a sense of place. Methodologically, the studio practice hinges on information gathered through the process of memory work. Used in place of lost personal archives and absent official records, this externalized memory (personal and third party) is used to locate place in the physical world and has been used to produce the three works discussed below. The three bodies of work, HomeWork (2011), Carry me Home (2011) and All my father’s houses: a catalogue by a builder’s daughter (2011 – 2014), produced for my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) are underpinned by a personal family narrative that, used as a pivot, relates critical theories of place, memory, migration and the archive. Importantly, the connection between these ideas and my creative practice is through my personal history of migration both voluntary and forced, historical and ongoing. Lost archives, personal and public, haunt, motivate and inform my work. As a family we have lost a number of houses and with them our personal archives. These archives contained the details and locations of 60 houses that, built by my father, anchor me to geographical place and inform my understanding of place and belonging. With the loss of these archives and as my childhood memories began to fade, I realised that I would soon lose an important connection to place. Prompted by these actualities I responded to an imagistic desire to translate my experiences of memory 1 Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, p.181 1 into visual photographic form where I could possess—through representation—and make portable the fixed material objects that are the physical remainders of memory within geographical place. Like the artists discussed by Martha Langford in her book, Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art, I am interested in a sense of place as processed through memory and expressed in creative form. In Chapter 1, I consider the meaning of place within the context of a mobile migrant journey, how it manifests in notions of home, how we establish it and our sense of belonging within it. As a starting point, I employ Marc Augé’s theories to consider place as geographically located in the real world. From here I connect to Lucy Lippard’s work and discuss the role of human agency and memory in the construction of the local. In parallel, my family narrative unfolds and speaks of multiple departures from and arrivals to place. Into this personal journey I weave Augé’s argument that the proliferation of the supermodern condition results in the waning of the meaning of place. I contest this notion and suggest that it is through the proliferation of this condition that the significance of place is thrown into high relief and new notions of belonging can be created. I continue to investigate this relationship between a mobile migrant experience and notions of place and home by linking to John Di Stefano’s suggestion that the notion of home might be best understood through the experience of journey. In Chapter 2, I discuss the artists who have influenced my practice Simryn Gill, Anne Ferran and Taryn Simon. I am drawn to how Gill and Ferran interrogate, evoke and reference notions of place, belonging and postcolonial power structures that can be seen operating in and out of the archive. In considering the form my work takes I draw inspiration in Simon’s use of the archival form to structure and present her work. In Chapter 3, I discuss my methodology, process of making images and the bodies of work produced. Prompted by the fragility of both memory and the archive, the works discussed collectively aim to give visual form to memories and, through representation, allow me to take possession of something that one day will be lost. 2 Each body of work responds to various failures in public and private archives that necessitate a turn to memory-work as a research method. Three structures of memory—mnemonic, post-memory and personal memory—are identified and utilised across the three bodies of work. In HomeWork, I turn to the family home as an archival source in an attempt to give visual form to memories of growing up a builder’s daughter. Mnemonic objects are recovered and when processed through photography point to broader notions of place and belonging as operating within a mobile migrant journey.

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