ARTIST STATEMENT 

"Home, Where The Hearth Is explores themes of home, family, renting and living on an island off another island. As luck would have it, I grew up in a loving family on Australia’s east coast. Now my siblings and I are scattered around the place while Mum and Dad hold down the fort in the family home.
 

The home and the hearth live inside of me. A dwelling in a body and a body in a dwelling. A feeling that lives inside like memories of places and people that I gently stoke to keep alive. A feeling that I take wherever I go.
 

The hearth represents warmth and takes a central position in the home, like the heart in the body. The hearth represents an altar too. An overlap of spiritual and domestic realms. Houses turn to homes and back as I move again and again. Packing away my books, collected shells, photographs, artworks, things that I have made and things that have made me."

BIO
 

Ileigh Hellier is an artist from Mulubinba (Newcastle), NSW, now living in Nipaluna (Hobart) TAS. Ileigh is primarily a painter although she works in a range of other mediums including printmaking, ceramics and sculpture.
 

Ileigh has received commended awards in both the Jacaranda Drawing Prize in 2022 and The John Glover Prize in 2020. Her work is held in both public and private collections.
 

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Home is a feeling dwelling inside of you
 

And maybe a dwelling outside of you
 

Home is a colour,
 

your friends and family or their spirit when they are far away or in other realms.
 

Home is a story about the place where your mum grew up and home is your dads favourite bird.
 

Home is the fruit that grows in abundance on the island that you live on.
 

Home is your heart, your hearth.