Jules Pilgrim

The piece is called 'Lararium' which is Latin for a household shrine dedicated to the spirit of a house and its occupants. A lararium was used to honour a family's ancestors as well as for offerings to the spirits, believed to inhabit all houses, in order that these spirits should look favourably on the occupying family, bringing luck, prosperity and protection to them. Shrines with a similar purpose still exist in many cultures today.

The piece was directly inspired, paradoxically, both by people's willingness to leave and / or defend their homes in the bushfires. So many people said 'it's just a house, we'll build again', while others lost their lives fighting for their house, that I got to wondering about the meaning of 'home', and perhaps for the need for other kinds of 'protection'.

The Lararium has been constructed from a reconfigured 'prie-dieu', (pray to God) a piece of furniture designed specifically for prayer and rarely seen nowadays. The framework supports heavily embroidered and embellished panels. The whole thing has two shelves and is designed to be wall hung so that the owners can add their own photographs (ancestors perhaps), statues or other prized possessions to the shrine.

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LARARIUM
Free machine embroidery, computerised machine embroidery (for the donkey work), found objects, hand made cords, coloured waxes and acrylic paint. 90 x 40cm