Jacqueline Fahey’s early embrace of the domestic sphere as a topic of artistic inquiry was a radical and unapologetic gesture within a male-dominated art world. Her insistence that the intimate realities of family life, domestic labour and the home were worthy subjects resonates with the feminist proposition that the personal is political. Second-wave feminists argued that experiences often dismissed as private or personal are shaped by wider structures of power and therefore demand collective and political attention. Fahey similarly transformed the domestic from a supposedly private realm into a site of artistic enquiry, making visible the complexities, tensions and relationships embedded within everyday life.

Domestic Topographies brings Fahey’s paintings into conversation with works by Claudia Kogachi, Georgie Nettell and Salome Tanuvasa. Across different generations and media, these artists turn towards the intimate: the home, the family, the body, domestic objects, memory and everyday routines. Their works suggest that the private sphere is never simply private, but a space in which gender, care, labour, identity, intimacy and power are continually negotiated. Rather than presenting a singular history of feminist art, the exhibition considers how artists across generations have transformed personal experience and domestic life into sites of artistic and political significance.