Self portrait of a family by Rosa Spring Voss

Details

Retail price for the framed work is for pick-up from NERAM, Armidale. Shipping Australia-wide can be arranged and will be invoiced separately.

Retail price for unframed prints already includes shipping Australia-wide.

Year: 2025

Size: 75 x 60 cm

Medium: Archival giclée print 

Description

Around my 28th birthday, an unexpected shift occurred: my parents, who had been divorced since I was four, chose to live together again. This decision was influenced by both the ongoing housing crisis in the Northern Rivers and the changing nature of their lives as they grew older.

I decided to spend the summer with them and document this awkward, delicate and beautiful time. Having no memory of my parents ever living under the same roof, it felt like a tender re-connection as adults. During this series, my parents, sibling and I also chose to embark on family therapy together.

This body of work examines how we navigate and maintain familial dynamics as we evolve over time. Now living in different parts of the world, our relationships are like a pendulum – constantly shifting and reconnecting as we meet each other in new ways. Through this project, I reflect on the complexities of family, the delicate balance of connection that persists despite time and distance, and the layers of grief involved in upholding traditional family structures as an aging queer person. It also raises questions about the realities of building my own family in the midst of an environmental and cost of living crisis.

Biography 

Rosa Spring Voss is an Australian/German artist, writer, and postpartum doula from Bundjalung Country, Mullumbimby.

In 2023 Spring Voss graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) at the Victorian College of Arts, Melbourne. Spring Voss was a finalist in the 2019 National Portrait Prize and has exhibited in Australia and internationally.

Home: Fingal Head, NSW