Anne Graham – Detail from Keeping the Wolf From the Door, 2019

The Small Arms Factory in Lithgow first opened in 1912 and many people came to Lithgow looking for work but there was nowhere for their families to live.

As in WW1 families suffered, especially wives… In 1942 the Government moved less skilled men from the Small Arms Factory into the Services or food production replacing them with women. At work in the factory the women engineered a range of weaponry for use in the war effort taking on the work previously undertaken by the men who were now at the front… (Lithgow Small Arms Factory, A History in Photographs, a publication by the Lithgow Small Arms Factory, 2012)

Many of these women, whose husbands were at war, had no proper housing and some had to make do with tents in the forest. I pay homage to these women and their capacity to cope resiliently. The triangular structure references their forest village of tents where they raised children, cooked, laundered and formed a brave community. After the war ended many of the women continued at the Small Arms Factory and were employed in the manufacture of sewing machines. My installation is a memorial to the many resilient, heroic men and women who carried on in times of difficulty in acknowledgement of their bravery and courage in keeping the wolf from the door.

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Anne Graham has worked with communities in Australia, Poland, Japan, Sweden
and America to produce community responses to their environment and to
enhance the community’s sense of ownership of a place or history. Her research
interests focus on an investigation of identity and space. Graham is particularly
concerned with creativity and its role in the formation of identity- her definition
of creativity includes cooking, gardening, walking and many forms of social and
constructive activity as well as more conventional notions of art and craft. Graham is interested in the notion of memory and the mnemonic function of objects and materials as constructors of identity.

Represented by Kronenberg Mais Wright Gallery

annegraham.com.au

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© Resilience in Times of Adversity, 2019