Lisa Hilli
Visual Arts
Just Like Home
Just Like Home is an exhibition, a meal, a film and a biography, which explores artist Lisa Hilli’s New Guinean and Australian heritage.
Just Like Home celebrates the continuation of Tolais cooking traditions, unique to the people of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, with an Aussie twist. With one simple meal Lisa Hilli highlights issues of assimilation and cultural adaption.
Video Documentary
Lisa’s video documentary, Just Like Home, is a portrayal of her mother, Cathy, preparing I gir (e gee-rrra), literally meaning ‘to steam with hot stones’. Made in suburban Brisbane, Just Like Home positions this specific Tolais culinary practice in a Western context, and reveals an interesting development; instead of using banana leaves which are integral to the cooking process, Lisa’s mother uses tin foil, thus adapting the recipe to suit her new adopted home and the resources at hand.
Sculptures
Watch Hilli’s video documentary under the shade of her life-sized banana tree sculptures constructed entirely of tin foil. Drawing inspiration from her mother these banana trees are shining monuments to the continuation and adaptation of this specific Tolais cooking tradition within Australia, and a celebration of a culture’s capacities to respond to shifting circumstances.
I Gir Cooking Demonstration / Performance
Lisa Hilli and her mother Cathy Hilli guide and demonstrate a celebratory feast melding Australian and Papua New Guinean cultures, where members of the public participate in the preparation, cooking and eating of I gir, a traditional vegetable and chicken dish cooked in banana leaves. While much of the time consuming food preparation will be done in advance of the demonstration participants are encouraged to try scraping coconuts, softening banana leaves and assisting Cathy in other aspects of the process. Then participants sit down and share I gir with Lisa and Cathy.
Detailed production information (PDF)
"It soon becomes evident that Just Like Home is less of a documentary than a documented exchange, a personal conversation between Hilli and her mother that we happen to be privy to; the camera a simply an intermediary".
Meg Hale, Re-emoting The Screen, Remote Catalogue, Next Wave Festival 2008
’Tinfoil became the conduit between her PNG ancestry and her Australian way of life..."
Lily Bragge, The Age, 2008
Just Like Home celebrates the continuation of Tolais cooking traditions, unique to the people of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, with an Aussie twist. With one simple meal Lisa Hilli highlights issues of assimilation and cultural adaption.
Video Documentary
Lisa’s video documentary, Just Like Home, is a portrayal of her mother, Cathy, preparing I gir (e gee-rrra), literally meaning ‘to steam with hot stones’. Made in suburban Brisbane, Just Like Home positions this specific Tolais culinary practice in a Western context, and reveals an interesting development; instead of using banana leaves which are integral to the cooking process, Lisa’s mother uses tin foil, thus adapting the recipe to suit her new adopted home and the resources at hand.
Sculptures
Watch Hilli’s video documentary under the shade of her life-sized banana tree sculptures constructed entirely of tin foil. Drawing inspiration from her mother these banana trees are shining monuments to the continuation and adaptation of this specific Tolais cooking tradition within Australia, and a celebration of a culture’s capacities to respond to shifting circumstances.
I Gir Cooking Demonstration / Performance
Lisa Hilli and her mother Cathy Hilli guide and demonstrate a celebratory feast melding Australian and Papua New Guinean cultures, where members of the public participate in the preparation, cooking and eating of I gir, a traditional vegetable and chicken dish cooked in banana leaves. While much of the time consuming food preparation will be done in advance of the demonstration participants are encouraged to try scraping coconuts, softening banana leaves and assisting Cathy in other aspects of the process. Then participants sit down and share I gir with Lisa and Cathy.
Detailed production information (PDF)
"It soon becomes evident that Just Like Home is less of a documentary than a documented exchange, a personal conversation between Hilli and her mother that we happen to be privy to; the camera a simply an intermediary".
Meg Hale, Re-emoting The Screen, Remote Catalogue, Next Wave Festival 2008
’Tinfoil became the conduit between her PNG ancestry and her Australian way of life..."
Lily Bragge, The Age, 2008
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