Just Like Home

Toured and presented by Kultour

Just Like Home is an exhibition, a meal, a film and a biography, which explores artist Lisa Hilli's New Guinean and Australian heritage.

Just Like Home celebrates the continuation of Tolais cooking traditions, unique to the people of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, with an Aussie twist. With one simple meal Lisa Hilli highlights issues of assimilation and cultural adaption.

Video Documentary

Lisa's video documentary, Just Like Home, is a portrayal of her mother, Cathy, preparing I gir (e gee-rrra), literally meaning 'to steam with hot stones'. Made in suburban Brisbane, Just Like Home positions this specific Tolais culinary practice in a Western context, and reveals an interesting development; instead of using banana leaves which are integral to the cooking process, Lisa's mother uses tin foil, thus adapting the recipe to suit her new adopted home and the resources at hand.

Sculptures

Watch Hilli’s video documentary under the shade of her life-sized banana tree sculptures constructed entirely of tin foil. Drawing inspiration from her mother these banana trees are shining monuments to the continuation and adaptation of this specific Tolais cooking tradition within Australia, and a celebration of a culture’s capacities to respond to shifting

“As a critical focal point of this project, I feel it is important to maintain my cultural inheritances and continue to practice them even if they are not truly in the traditional sense. By applying these cultural histories and traditions through a contemporary context, I believe my ideas and knowledge of my New Guinean culture are being delivered in a way that appeals to an audience within popular culture yet fulfils my needs to maintain my specific New Guinean / Australian individuality.” Lisa Hilli, Artist

“It soon becomes evident that Just Like Home is less of a documentary than a documented exchange, a personal conversation between Hilli and her mother that we happen to be privy to; the camera a simply an intermediary”.  Meg Hale, Re – emoting The Screen, Remote Catalogue, Next Wave Festival 2008 

“Tinfoil became the conduit between her PNG ancestry and her Australian way of life…”  Lily Bragge, The Age, 2008

This installation will co-incide with Planet: Won Solwora, a concert featuring George Telek (PNG), David Bridie (AUST), Richard Mogu (PNG), the Narasirato Pan Pipers (Solomon Islands) and band (AUST/PNG) in the Powerhouse Theatre on Wednesday 31 March. 

This is a Kultour presentation developed in partnership with Multicultural Arts Victoria and BEMAC with the assistance of the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.