The Quiet Room

‘Home’ – as much a concept as it is a place. The potent notion of home conjures feelings of warmth – a refuge from the world. It is not simply a physical space where we eat and sleep; it’s where we can be ourselves, where we dream, and where memories are made. Domesticity is a rich and complex puzzle. The works in this exhibition draw upon emotionally charged feelings, embodying the solitude and anarchy, contradictions and sanctity of home.

The Quiet Room is a sacred space for contemplation and careful observation, inviting you to reawaken memories of people and places, while creating space for self-reflection.

The objects we surround ourselves with make us who we are. As we grow and change, some things are treasured – others get banished to the kerb. The work is fabricated from hundreds of reclaimed and discarded chairs, salvaged from the roadside – dirty, broken and forgotten – each one a quiet witness to human presence.

Abandoned chairs are profoundly poetic creatures, each one imbued with its own history – a previous life of function, movement and meaning. Each chair’s inherited aesthetic speaks to a bygone era of domesticity that feels both comforting and contradictory. Once ubiquitous, wooden chairs occupied almost every Australian home, lasting through generations. The look and feel of dark-stained wooden furniture is instantly recognisable and forms part of our domestic vernacular. These designs are remnants of a European inheritance, concealing the spectacular colours of Australian timbers, intended to emulate English walnut – a longing for ‘home’ that, in this case, lies somewhere very far away.

These chairs evoke memories – cigarettes smouldering in an ashtray, grandparents, lace curtains in a dark room, arguments and roast dinners— something familiar and reassuring, yet clouded by a darker undercurrent; quiet ghosts of something ominous.

These works give discarded chairs a voice, dignity and authority, becoming the paint on my canvas. Monochromatic surface treatments of Indian ink, dye, gouache, homemade stains, torching and ebonising are interrupted by flashes of vibrant orange – moments that confront uncontrollable wild domestic tensions, desire, passion and sexuality.

The compositions suggest components could be plucked from the surface and somehow reassembled, reflecting a persistent yearning for connection, repair, regret and order. Fragmented yet unified, echoing memories assembled from incomplete and shifting remains. These are the pieces that make us who we are. 

Jono Everett