Redefining home
Discovering a collection of old Polaroid cameras sent Hayley Megan French in a new creative direction and reshaped her sense of home.
From within my Zoom meeting screen, artist Hayley Megan French leans towards me from the living room of her Harris Park apartment. Her partner Rob sits beside her and between their slight shuffles I can see a sliver of their home ― a spread of picture frames across the far wall, a bright couch and a shadow left of my screen from a floor to ceiling bookshelf.
‘When she says she has a lot of books...’, Rob begins and gestures towards the shelves behind. He estimates Hayley has enough books to cover nine square metres and Hayley laughs wide, recalling the stress of her book collection being packed away by removalists.
Hayley's concern for her books is only a fraction of her broader desire to craft and preserve her home as her own. It highlights the couple’s determination to make their home reflect only themselves. Years prior, Rob and Hayley bought a block of land in Guildford to one day build a house and call it their family home. Before they commenced building, they moved out of Hayley’s parents’ house to a studio apartment in Parramatta as an interim step. The couple then moved into a rental home in Guildford to settle into what would become their neighbourhood.
I started walking around Guildford with a camera. Photography became a form of note-taking; what makes a suburb also makes a home.
When they moved into this second rental, the pair rummaged through what had been kept in various storage locations – their parents’ homes and storage lockers – to consolidate their belongings. They unearthed a collection of broken and unused Polaroid cameras that went on to be a key element in Hayley’s visual art practice.
‘It was an amazing discovery, because, as an artist, it introduced a new way of thinking about my work and about Guildford itself,’ Hayley says.
