Katy Wallace
Bio
I am a designer and maker and have been making stuff for decades now. My work is diverse and evolving - always with sustainable roots and conceptual ideas about the way we live with objects. I love a challenge, such as taking used things and making them better, or pushing materials to their engineering limits.
Description
Title: Temporary Shelter
This tent was made 1 year after cyclone Gabrielle as part of the Ka Mua Ka Muri event. It was a collaborative effort, made whilst talking about ideas of repair and reflair, and what a circular economy might look like for our futures.
The donated tent was an apt starting point to explore some of the feelings of becoming homeless or displaced and ending up in emergency shelter in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.
I didn’t lose my home but, as I helped those that did, the depths of devastation became apparent. Possessions dragged out in public from flooded homes, weeks spent unsettled in emergency or temporary accommodation with little chance for privacy to process the gravity of the situation.
The tent is adorned with layers of used domestic textiles: sheets, curtains, tablecloths, attempting to offer a place of shelter, and privacy. Homely layers of soft fabric and curtaining suggest sanctuary, a cheery but flimsy façade. The transparent tent is scarce on privacy, warmth and comfort, an illusion. It symbolizes the in- between space of being buoyed by community love and support, while facing the heavy realities of losing everything.
Deep respect to all those that have built homes up again from scratch.
Social - @katy5725
Contact - katy@katywallace.co.nz
Link to research
Coming Soon
