About this project

In 2003, I sat in the upstairs room of an artist-run gallery in Fitzroy, Melbourne, and asked visitors to tell me about places they’ve lived.

They told me stories about homes they’d just found, and about homes they’d left and missed. In return for their stories, I promised to make something for them. Something like a memento. That’s how these postcards came about.

It took me nine years to start making these postcards. Before starting, I’d discarded many ideas for things I could make. Nothing seemed right. Every idea seemed like an unnecessary footnote to the stories I’d been told by my visitors.

Their stories stayed with me, their words often came to mind. The postcards became a way to send an echo of those stories back to their owners, in their words and mine. They arrive, many years later, as postcards from the past.

> How I make the postcards