Collection: Erica Cameron-Taylor - Solo Exhibition

UPCOMING: What Remains - Embellishing Heritage

EXHIBITION DATES: 18-28 SEPTEMBER 2025

EXHIBITION OPENING NIGHT: SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2025 2-4pm

Solo Exhibition in Gallery 1.

The works in this show are concerned with memory, heritage and the loss of things once held dear.

The Chateau Napier, which opened in 1910 and burnt to the ground in 1957, stood on the corner of Bathurst Road and Leura Mall. All that remains now is a stone arch, some steps and walls. The site remains derelict. It was once the grandest guest house in the mountains. What are we to make of the heritage significance of a place now evidenced only by lantana and the fragmentary detritus of urban society? 

The images have been created using manipulated photographs of the site and of collected artefacts, particularly glass fragments, melted in the fire. Paper is painted and augmented and finally embellished with embroidery, reflecting on an artform that is a predominantly female space of decoration often serving to preserve memory. In a contemporary cultural idiom decoration itself is at risk of extinction. Carnival glass, popular from 1907 into the 1940’s, was originally created as ‘poor man’s Tiffany’ and held pride of place in many parlours. And now it is available for a few dollars on eBay.

The works reflect on the ways people preserve memory and on what ‘heritage’ actually means in an often-utilitarian society uncomfortable with embellishment.