Narelle Jubelin — Contexto. For RDJ, RG & TH | at The Commercial | opening drinks Saturday 23.03.24, 3—5pm It is this era of modernist optimism and architectural utopianism that artist Narelle Jubelin situates her body of work, Owner Builder of Modern California House. First exhibited in 2001, the series now consists of 11 petit-points, based on a number of photographs taken by her father, Raymond, in 1964. The photographs detail the construction of the Jubelin family home, situated on a triangular block on Dharug/Darug land, in what was then a newly developed suburb north west of Sydney. The blonde brick building was built by her parents and a crew of helpers, and remains occupied by Jubelin’s mother. There’s optimism and anticipation in these images; the wooden frame of the house is exposed, bricks pile up, people cluster in discussion, in the foreground deliveries of materials wait to be assembled. Yet with construction there is inevitable destruction, the felled trees, the cleared shrubbery, the materials extracted from the earth. The struck through word of Jubelin’s title — California — attests to this undoing of place. With the crossing out of the geographical identifier, Jubelin decontextualises the ‘modern house’. It is everywhere and nowhere. —excerpt from exhibition text by Amelia Wallin image: scanned 35mm slide taken by Raymond D Jubelin, 1964