Elaine Miles *Reflections 2009*

Jean Miles: Reflection (2009) - Photograph: Julie Clarke, 2010

Elaine Miles - Performance installation, Atrium, Federation Square. Photo: Julie Clarke (2010)

We've all seen them, in antique or opportunity shops or displayed in Gran's cupboards. Already possessed and taking pride of place or awaiting possession, these delicate objects, as precious as any jewel are like Pyrite, they look like gold, but our eyes fool us in our looking.

I'm talking about the myriad of gold, amber, brown and yellow, cut glass or smooth glassware, goblets, cups, glasses, bowls, plates, all kinds of trinkets, a worn out honey-colored Teddy bear, hanging tinsel, a gold painted vacuum cleaner, a quilt (made by her mother), goldenrod lampshades, stacks and stacks of glistening beads, fabric with decorative yellow edge and other glass and copper ornaments that form part of an installation entitled 'Reflections (2009) by the Melbourne artist Dr Elaine Miles, currently on display in the Atrium at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Elaine Miles artwork 'draws upon and re-considers interactions with domestic environments and quotidian objects' (catalogue). When I happened upon the artist, her mother and a friend who were quietly finishing off a number of woollen toys within the installation space this afternoon I was taken back to my own childhood, the pleasures of sitting, talking and making; the comfort of holding a toy made for you by loving hands.

This rather minimal performance occurred without fuss and bother - after all, they were doing what families do, or did, in times long past. It evoked for me the women who worked side by side in the film "How to make an American Quilt' (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1995). Watching Elaine interact with the women who were part of the woven fabric of her life, the intimacy and knowing looks, I remembered my own grandmother, the basket that had permanent residency next to her lounge-chair, the three colors of wool (brown, grey and black, ) used by her to darn holes in our socks. Her Singer sewing machine and the folds of fabric that fell around it as she worked. The brown-Betty - too small for more than two good cups of tea and the amber set of glasses - a wedding present, all those years ago, protected inside the deep brown wooden side-board. But there was other glass, not all brown - green and clear and just as fragile and the fake gold leaf frame around an image of a golden nymph. Gold is on our fingers it is in our psyche, forever something to be desired.

The highly reflective surfaces of the fragile glass in Elaine's installation, evoked a sense of enlightenment or revelation, the spiritual link between family and objects. How their presence ultimately evokes a sense of memory, re-collection, reanimation of that, which will remain forever absent. But, there was nothing negative or depressing about these things that suggested another time and place, a gentler era, one that might only be visited by bringing such a unique collection together.