MARCH 2022
FELTDARK

TERESA BUSUTTIL (SA)
Stuffat tal-Bebbux

Teresa’s enquiries into memory and culture are informed by her background as the daughter of a Maltese migrant. Stuffat tal-Bebbux explores a single early memory centring on her childhood home in the Adelaide Hills. 

Teresa recollects seeing her late father catching and purging garden snails to cook stuffat tal-bebbux, a traditional Maltese garden snail stew. The work captures the involved process of recreating the dish as both an act of nostalgia and memorialisation.

The work considers concepts of belonging, cultural memory, processes of transference and the continuation of tradition across time and place. For Teresa the dish evokes memories of her Adelaide Hills home, for her father it recalls Malta. 

In the work the ubiquitous garden snail embodies notions of both habitat and migration encapsulating the ever-shifting idea of home. 

Sound by Mat Morrison