In 1981, I left England to emigrate to Australia with my mother and her partner. After many years, I realized how deeply I missed England and I’ve been trying to return home ever since!
In 2023 I was lucky enough to be included in two exhibitions at Dora House. The first was the annual Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Show, 'The Shape of Life', curated by Edward Bulmer and the second, ‘Making Together’, a fantastic collaboration with Thompson Hall from Actionspace. This opportunity was part of the Peer X Peer initiative through Art et al. and the Society. My time spent with both of these exhibitions was indeed as dreamy as it gets. I’m a great lover of history and spent time soaking up the story of how Cecil acquired his studio at Dora house which happened to be the very gallery in which Thompson and I were to exhibit! The building itself is naturally welcoming and I really did feel as if I had come home.
I became an artist in Australia and utilized stories from my childhood in England. Whilst the stories are difficult, the sense of belonging, inclusion and care from the Society, Art et al. and Actionspace community went beyond what I could have anticipated.
The culmination of our exhibition at Dora house offered a central installation of shelter for the homeless, accompanied by a beautiful essay from Jes Fernie, ‘titled, ‘Tenderness and how to get there’. How art can lead us to a place of transcendence and possibility. Coming home, exhibiting within such an extraordinary building, meeting people who genuinely cared deeply about art and history, had somehow, miraculously presented a home within a home.
Simone Kennedy MRSS, March 2026
Simone Kennedy MRSS is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, soft sculpture, and small literary works. She holds a doctorate exploring the inter-subjective relationship between mother and infant, inter-generational trauma, attachment psychology, and symbolic association. Her practice reflects the translation of ‘self,’ the brain, a symbolic mother figure, and the common housefly as a metaphor. Through these themes, she explores memory and emotion, integrating found objects with new and recycled materials in a ‘freestyle’ approach, to form meaning through making.
Ahead of the Year of the Home in 2026 when we celebrate the Society's 50 years at Dora House, we asked members to share with us their personal memories of Dora House. We will be sharing them throughout 2026 as part of a programme of this milestone, marked also by the delivery of our project Creating a Home for Sculptors. If you have a memory you would like to share, you can still do so via this link.
