Sleeper is the culmination of a four year project during which Julie Shiels has used discarded mattresses as source material for her art. Found on suburban nature-strips or laneways as either hard rubbish or the recent refuge of the homeless, or factory-stacked for recycling, the mattresses have been materially recuperated and conceptually revalued by Shiels in disparate but interconnected works of art.

Situated in its original location, the mattress has been a support for Shiels’s stencilled texts; pyjamas have been fashioned from salvaged fabric; an array of sharp instruments functioning as makeshift weapons, and found secreted in the stuffing and folds of the mattress, have been documented with the apparent emotional detachment of forensic investigation.

Shiels has a long-established art practice working in and with diverse communities on reclamation of social histories; the recall and imaginative visual and physical manifestation of memories; and the residual potency of abandoned objects – particularly those drawn from domestic environments – to suggest poignant or downright unsettling narratives.

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