Nerine Martini

My father was a sailor and at the front of our house he had installed an anchor. As a child I used to think that the anchor was holding the house down. Years later, some 25 years later in fact, I went back to see the old house and the anchor was still there, so that stayed in my mind. 

The trigger for using it as a motif in a sculpture was witnessing the largest number of people displaced in Europe since World War II. In 2015, on television screens, from the comfort of our lounge rooms, we watched waves of displaced people at sea in small flimsy boats, being hoisted from the ocean, or walking long distances in search of freedom. I was feeling a mix of empathy and powerlessness. The sculpture speaks of opposition – the anchor symbolising safety and security. However, this anchor is covered in checked plastic – the type associated with cheap carry bags, poverty and mobility.

I also read a story by Debra Adelaide called ‘The Master Shavers’ Association of Paradise’ (in A Country Too Far, 2013, eds Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally). It’s about a man, a refugee, who was given one of those plastic carry-all bags, but he had so few belongings to put in it that it just looked like a crumpled heap. I thought about that checked plastic and how everyone has a relationship with it. We use it to move our belongings from one house to another, but what if that was the only thing you had to contain all your belongings and what if, even then, everyone else’s looked like a nice square little brick and yours just looked like a crumpled heap. That story really struck me. So in that way the two things came together – the anchor being about security, being anchored and the plastic being about poverty and mobility.

Between Certainties: Plywood, woven plastic bags, 104 x 187 x 132cm (plus chain), 

Exhibited: 
Diaspora-Making Machines – Blacktown Arts Centre 2016.
Unravel – AirSpace Projects 2016.