The most lockdown city in the world is an exploration of my own understanding of what it means to be a woman. I am interested in inserting myself into these traditional roles and feel into what it’s like to embody them.

I had been through 13 weeks of an intense lockdown due to the Delta variant of covid hitting Melbourne. Creating this work on the last day of that lockdown was cathartic and celebratory. I chose to bake a Damion Pignolet fairy cake and cut out numbers from black Halloween fondant to represent the amount of time spent inside the home. The cake was a surprise to my partner, his children and my best mate ed (who illegally visited the home). I wanted to create a moment for the children to remember, an end date to the sacrifices that had been made. These lockdowns gave me a new perspective on the importance of home. Small acts like baking took on a new meaning when it was the main event of the day. All of sudden where I got my eggs from was intriguing. I began to notice slightly different yolk shades of yellowy orange when chooks where raised in friends backyards.

The trade economy was revamped in my neighbourhood, swapping lemon slice for apricot jam, handmade chopping board for ongoing baking lessons, portraits for champagne. Businesses began delivering local eggs, beer, herbs and spices to my door. The act of learning how to bake something became poetic. Life was simple.

I had been listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen and felt drawn to his song wayfarer in particular. I was listening to this track over and over as I prepared the cake. It was soothing me, just like the process of baking. The work is Tracey Moffatt like, in it’s frozen cinematic quality, the 50s black and white portrait of the home and a setting that makes you wonder if it’s staged or not. In an interview with Frieze, Moffatt describes her work to be about the ‘human condition’, which is unavoidably shaped by its environment. My own girlhood to womanhood is a theme that comes up a lot throughout my work. The most lockdown city in the world is an exploration of my own understanding of what it means to be a woman. I am interested in inserting myself into these traditional roles and feel into what it’s like to embody it. Sense the loneliness, beauty, mystery and sadness narrowing my identity down as I play housewife. I am left feeling into the discomfort of realising that there are parts of the dynamic that I enjoy.