Baggage Handling: Humans arriving and departing with baggage.
By Lia Kemmis – Ladies Gallery
10am – 3pm every Friday and Saturday 18 July – 5 September

Baggage Handling: Humans arriving and departing with baggage.

In this exhibition Lia explores the journeys of 4 items of baggage. The school case, the backpack, the handbag, and the wheelie suitcase. “These types of baggage are archetypal to my life experience, you might imagine your baggage held in other kinds of containers.”

This is an exhibition about grief, utilising the metaphor of (emotional) baggage. Looking at the Gunning train station as having many poetic connections to passing through, passing on, passing away. A train station has poetic connections to journeys – both arrivals and departures.

Choices made about destinations, travelling companions, stories shared, and the physical weight of lugging your baggage.

We are all born into our own scenario that comes with its unique baggage and when we die we leave behind baggage for others to deal with. This baggage is both emotional and material. Some of the baggage ends up at the op shop, some is held preciously in our hearts.

These paintings do not reveal the contents of the school case, backpack, handbag, or suitcase rather the environments they inhabit provides clues in regard to where they have been and where they are going.