Home’s Co-Director Madeleine Preston is exhibiting this work with blackartprojects at Sydney Contemporary. Jacob’s Ladder, 2018, underglazed porcelain, copper (pictured) will be showing in the Art Money booth. Photo by docqment

“Jacobs Ladder was made in response to my experiences during a residency at the Cité in Paris. The work responds directly to the way particular museums use culture in the service of ideas of empire. The Quai Branly museum in Paris has an enormous collection that originates in what the museum calls ‘economic exchanges as the result of the first colonial expansion.’

What struck me most was that a large part if not most of the collection would have been amassed through theft and ‘economic exchanges’ that favoured the buyer – if an ‘exchange’ occurred at all. The Quai Branly like the British Museum is a study in European imperialism. I wanted to make work about how museums are ciphers for violent histories that use aesthetics and display to reinforce dominant narratives.”