North Gallery, Melbourne
20 July – 3 August 2024
Pantry Study explored the cultural diversity of contemporary Melbourne through one of the most intimate and ordinary spaces in the home: the pantry.
For the exhibition, I visited 15 households from different cultural backgrounds, looking at the ingredients, objects, recipes and rituals that shaped the way each family cooked and ate.
Australia is home to the world’s oldest continuing cultures, as well as people who identify with more than 270 ancestries. That diversity is embedded in the way we eat. Our kitchens carry stories of migration, family, memory, adaptation and tradition, often in ways that feel completely everyday.
The project began from a more personal question. I had been thinking about my own cultural background and the fact that my family history in Australia did not feel particularly defined by strong food traditions or a clear cultural identity. Much of my family’s story was shaped by hardship, including the Great Depression, and by a kind of practical, pared-back way of living.
That made me wonder where my own sense of culture sits within contemporary Australia.
Through these 15 households, Pantry Study became less about looking for one fixed idea of Australian identity and more about recognising Australia as a collection of cultures, traditions and histories living alongside one another.
At its heart, the exhibition was about food as a way of understanding people: what we inherit, what we hold onto, what changes, and what we choose to pass on.
