Jenny Gill Schirmer is an emerging artist whose practice explores a connection between found objects and deliberately formed materials to conjure elusive memories of time or place.

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard wrote, “in order to sense, across the years, our attachment for the house we were born in, dream is more powerful than thought.” This idea forms the conceptual foundation of The Tonality of Home, an exhibition that explores the emotional resonance of early domestic spaces and the way memory distorts, intensifies, or softens our perception of them over time.

Material exploration underpins the artists’ practice. Fossicked offcuts and found objects – fragments of past use and forgotten purpose – are combined with refined surfaces to evoke the layered nature of memory. Rich timber, worn textures, and patinated materials become vessels for nostalgia, echoing the quiet erosion and accumulation that occurs as spaces age and stories settle into their corners.

Drawing on Bachelard’s theory that “memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality of those of home,” the works consider how places once associated with safety and belonging become more vivid in recollection, especially during times of uncertainty. Perspective is impermanent – shaped by emotion, experience, and the changing conditions of our time.

Through material and memory, The Tonality of Home invites viewers to reflect on the spaces that shaped them, and the dream-like fidelity with which those spaces continue to live in us.

THE TONALITY OF HOME
Jenny Gill Schirmer
Lone Goat Gallery Byron Bay
October 25 – November 22, 2025
Opening 5.30 – 7.30pm Friday 24 October