Gestures of Care is a multimedia exhibition including ink painting installation, textiles, ceramics, animated film, collage, lino prints and cardboard sculptures. These illustrate the ways care flows between people in a unique peer to peer support program, Family-by-Family. The exhibition focuses on how space and time is created for building social relationships, sharing experiences and making connections.

Each collection of artworks demonstrates the multiple ways in which care circulates in the program. The material qualities of flowing ink and textured paper, of warm woollen blankets, and soft, earthy clay that feature in Gestures of Care are affective registers evoking memories, experiences of care and collaborative and sensory processes. In drawing themes together across the exhibition, we show how gestures of care are foundational to peer-to-peer relationships in Family-by-Family, building alternative systems of community-led care that create spaces for hope, empowerment, interdependence and intergenerational change.

Gestures of Care is the result of a three-year creative research collaboration between Family-by-Family participants, The Art Bus artists and anthropologists from the School of Social Sciences, Adelaide University, in partnership with Uniting Communities and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). Gestures of Care features work made by families and people involved in the program, in collaboration with The Art Bus, local Adelaide artists and researchers.

We acknowledge the generous support of The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, Adelaide University, in sponsoring and co-presenting this exhibition.

Work in this exhibition has been named as a finalist in the Don Dunstan Foundation Award.