• Upcoming Exhibitions
• Current Exhibitions
• Past Exhibitions
  • 2009 Design Challenge: Fire
  • A Day in Pompeii
  • agIdeas NewStar
  • agIdeas NewStar 2011
  • agIdeas NewStar 2012
  • Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic
  • Archaeological Time Capsule
  • Birds of Paradise
  • Body Parts
  • Bodyscape
  • Christmas Card Display
  • Colliding Worlds
  • Design Discovery Awards
  • Design Now!
  • Dinosaurs in Time
  • Drugs: a social history
  • Five things about Charles Darwin
  • Freestyle
  • Fringe Furniture
  • Fringe Furniture 2008
  • Glenn Murcutt
  • Great White Fleet
  • Hatching the Past
  • Honey bees
  • INNOVIC's Next Big Thing Award
  • John Rodriquez – Textile Designer
  • Launch Pad 2008
  • Leadbeater's Possum
  • Living in a Sensory World
  • Menagerie
  • Mirror: Jeannie Baker
  • Miss Australia
  • Morrie and Ursa
  • New Views 2
  • Paragon Shoes
  • Phar Lap Reunion
  • Phar Lap the Wonder Horse
  • Pompeii Body Casts
  • Premier's Design Awards 2008
  • Shutter Up You Face
  • Southern Diversity
  • Spirit of the Games
  • Summer Holiday Snaps
  • Te Vainui O Pasifika
  • The 1888 Melbourne Cup
  • The Dying Lion
  • The Great Wall of China
  • The Virtual Room
  • The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia
  • Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition
  • To Mars and Beyond
  • Toolayn Koortakay
  • Top Designs 2010
  • Top Designs 2011
  • Top Designs 2012
  • Treasures
  • Trepang
  • Tutankhamun
  • Vintage Christmas Decorations
  • We Depend on Nature
  • Zmood: designing Holdens

Mirror: Jeannie Baker

Images from Mirror.
Source: Jeannie Baker

See the work of renowned children’s author and artist Jeannie Baker.

Explore the story of two boys from two worlds that could not be further apart. Despite a great geographical and culture separation, their lives mirror one another in essential ways.

Mirror is an exhibition featuring collages from the recent book of the same name by best selling children’s author and artist Jeannie Baker.

Jeannie's vibrant works present a visual story that both contrasts and reveals the parallels in the everyday life of a boy in Australia and a boy in a remote Berber village in Morocco. The collages take us on a journey that reveals more similarities than differences between the two cultures. It's an exhibition of works that every child should see and that people of all ages will enjoy.

Mirror is supported by the Australian Government through the Council for Australian–Arab Relations (CAAR).

Artist’s statement:
The idea for this work came from my delight in travelling in a country very different from my own. At the time in my own country there was much political poisoning of attitudes towards foreigners and foreignness. But travelling alone in remote Morocco, a woman ‘stranger’ myself, I was met with much friendliness and generosity from ‘strangers’. The idea for the work was right there: that outward appearances may be very different but the inner person of a ‘stranger’ may not be a stranger at all. We all live to be loved by family and friends and to be part of a larger family, a community. Inwardly we are so alike that it could be each other we see when we look in a mirror.

The settings I chose for the families in the story are the Valley of Roses (famous for its rose perfume) in southern Morocco and my home in Sydney, Australia. The images started as drawings. Using these drawings as a guide, I then made collages. These were constructed layer by layer on a wooden baseboard using a combination of natural and artificial materials such as sand, earth, clay, paints, vegetation, paper, fabric, wool, tin and plastic. The natural materials were preserved and fresh colouring added.