Boundaries: Transcended is a profound collective statement about a universal concept: that of ‘home’. This large-scale installation, made up of 700 tiny houses made out of clay, is the culmination of hundreds of community participants coming together to celebrate, via art making, the widespread resettlement of refugees in the Hunter Valley.
The sheer number of artists involved has resulted in wide-ranging interpretations of what a home or dwelling might be. “Many of the participants have created works that appear representational, and the power of those works lie within their personal stories of home,” says director of Bank Art Museum Moree (BAMM), Rosie Dennis.
Among those works are clay representations of Ghanaian traditional huts, Indian apartments and Australian humpies alongside an array of tents, huts and caravans. As the exhibition’s title suggests, the definition of home is flexible, with some artists choosing to create religious buildings such as mosques, churches or temples to express a sense of belonging. And, significantly, the artwork is not yet finished: a key part of the exhibition is a series of public workshops that will allow community members to make their own ceramic works to add to the collection.
This sense of abundance and volume is vital. While the exhibition features hundreds of individual expressions, each with their own character and resonance, overall it is undoubtedly the quantity of works on show, presented as a single entity, that gives Boundaries: Transcended its impact, and its poetry.
“Whilst there is strength in individual works—and many with powerful, emotional stories, some representational, others more abstract—the strength of Boundaries: Transcended is the assembly of all the works to create a richer, deeper narrative about home, with a collective voice,” says Dennis.
“It is a testament to the power of art in building and reflecting community bonds.”
Boundaries: Transcended
Bank Art Museum Moree
3 August—13 September
This article was originally published in the July/August 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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