If These Walls Could Talk
𝗜𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗦𝗘 𝗪𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗦 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗟𝗗 𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗞
𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗻 𝗢𝘁𝘄𝗮𝘆
𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝟰𝘁𝗵 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟱:𝟯𝟬 - 𝟳𝗽𝗺
𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀: 𝟳 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗼 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁, 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝘂𝗿𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗮𝗵, 𝗡𝗦𝗪 𝟮𝟰𝟴𝟰
(Please join me for this opening)
RSVP https://events.humanitix.com/evening-with-helen-otway
Rooms remember what we forget.
They absorb the traces of everyday life—the shifting of light across a floor, the scrape of a chair, a garment draped in passing. In If These Walls Could Talk, I explore interiors as quiet containers of memory, shaped as much by the furniture within them as by the stories that once moved through their walls.
These works sit within the caldera’s embrace, where the landscape itself holds layers of time, renewal, and lived experience. Murwillumbah’s shops have been transformed over generations—this very space shifting from a butchery to the beautifully restored Echora, where natural fibres, threads, and textures now hang. The walls have witnessed work, conversation, change, and reinvention. That history lingers.
The chairs in this series act as vessels for those unseen narratives. A bentwood chair that belonged to another era, a kitchen chair that might have heard decades of family stories, a studio chair that held moments of pause or reflection. Much like Van Gogh’s iconic chairs, these objects become portraits through absence—suggesting the people who once sat, worked, waited, hoped, or simply rested there.
I’ve been thinking about The Poetics of Space—how a room is never just a room. It is psychological as much as physical, metaphorical as much as literal. A chair becomes a place to be held. A window becomes a threshold between what is inside and what is yet to come. Curtains shift with the seasons, and time becomes something you can almost see moving through the edges of the frame.
Each painting offers a small stage where memory and imagination meet. Some stories may have unfolded long ago; others only reveal themselves when someone steps into the room and recognises something familiar. The objects invite us to wonder:
Whose stories do they carry? What traces remain? What echoes still hum beneath the surface?
This exhibition is a meditation on stillness, presence, and the emotional weight of the everyday.
If these walls—or these chairs—could talk, their voices might sound like the turning of seasons, the soft fall of fabric, the shifting of light, the quiet persistence of life lived in small, meaningful spaces.
My heartfelt thanks to Donna and the Echora team for inviting me to share this series in such a beautifully restored and thoughtfully curated space.
𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗻 𝗢𝘁𝘄𝗮𝘆
𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝟰𝘁𝗵 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟱:𝟯𝟬 - 𝟳𝗽𝗺
𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀: 𝟳 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗼 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁, 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝘂𝗿𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗮𝗵, 𝗡𝗦𝗪 𝟮𝟰𝟴𝟰
(Please join me for this opening)
RSVP https://events.humanitix.com/evening-with-helen-otway
Rooms remember what we forget.
They absorb the traces of everyday life—the shifting of light across a floor, the scrape of a chair, a garment draped in passing. In If These Walls Could Talk, I explore interiors as quiet containers of memory, shaped as much by the furniture within them as by the stories that once moved through their walls.
These works sit within the caldera’s embrace, where the landscape itself holds layers of time, renewal, and lived experience. Murwillumbah’s shops have been transformed over generations—this very space shifting from a butchery to the beautifully restored Echora, where natural fibres, threads, and textures now hang. The walls have witnessed work, conversation, change, and reinvention. That history lingers.
The chairs in this series act as vessels for those unseen narratives. A bentwood chair that belonged to another era, a kitchen chair that might have heard decades of family stories, a studio chair that held moments of pause or reflection. Much like Van Gogh’s iconic chairs, these objects become portraits through absence—suggesting the people who once sat, worked, waited, hoped, or simply rested there.
I’ve been thinking about The Poetics of Space—how a room is never just a room. It is psychological as much as physical, metaphorical as much as literal. A chair becomes a place to be held. A window becomes a threshold between what is inside and what is yet to come. Curtains shift with the seasons, and time becomes something you can almost see moving through the edges of the frame.
Each painting offers a small stage where memory and imagination meet. Some stories may have unfolded long ago; others only reveal themselves when someone steps into the room and recognises something familiar. The objects invite us to wonder:
Whose stories do they carry? What traces remain? What echoes still hum beneath the surface?
This exhibition is a meditation on stillness, presence, and the emotional weight of the everyday.
If these walls—or these chairs—could talk, their voices might sound like the turning of seasons, the soft fall of fabric, the shifting of light, the quiet persistence of life lived in small, meaningful spaces.
My heartfelt thanks to Donna and the Echora team for inviting me to share this series in such a beautifully restored and thoughtfully curated space.