Rachel Morley presents: Art isn’t going to help this town (working title)

Art is not going to help this town (working title) is a love letter to family, car trips, suburban housing estates and train stations. Reflecting on the ways that housing and travel infrastructure shape our lives, Rachel Morley and her family recreate their shared memories of Melbourne’s western suburbs through a series of photographs and short films on super 8.

Through the use of “old” film cameras, nostalgia is employed as a means to shift the common narrative of outer suburban life. What is often labelled as an underprivileged and under-resourced region is viewed instead through the artist’s rose-coloured childhood memories. It’s cool to do donuts in the carpark with your dad, to do a drive-by and spy on the old house with your mum. With love and admiration at its core, this project draws connections between identity, behaviour and infrastructure through the lens of familial relationships.

The working title Art isn’t going to help this town is taken from a Facebook comment by a local resident of Wyndham City Council. It encapsulates the anxiety felt by many in outer western suburbs communities, faced with the overwhelming problem of current infrastructure straining under an influx of new residents. Rachel appropriates the sentiment with irony, acknowledging that while art won’t fix these problems it can still change our approach to them.

Where Rachel’s previous work has been critical of suburbia, this project quietly acknowledges those observations before pushing them aside to celebrate familial love and the ways it enables us to navigate the structures that define our world.

‘Art isn’t going to help this town’ is currently in-development.

This event is part of a series of showings from Next Wave's 2024–25 Kickstart Program. The program supported seven individual artists and one collective to develop a project over 18 months, under the guidance of Next Wave and local mentors.

Accessibility

Brunswick Mechanics Institute is a step-free venue with accessible bathrooms.

Video tour of Brunswick Mechanics Institute

Download the Brunswick Mechanics Institute visual story (.docx)
Download the Brunswick Mechanics Institute visual story (.pdf)

Download the Brunswick Mechanics Institute transport and parking information (.docx)
Download the Brunswick Mechanics Institute transport and parking information (.pdf)