The Meaning of Moorabbin is Open For Inspection is a site-specific installation that plays with Australian notions of family and suburbia.

Presented in Moorabbin, the iconic suburb of the local government area in which David Pledger grew up, this work is at once personal, social and political. 

Staged as an open inspection, a ‘real estate agent’ invites visitors to view the property. Ambient set pieces in each room are presented as attractive ‘features’ for prospective buyers. Ruminations about the suburbs and the suburban house are evoked as visitors move through the property. In the laundry, a camera is set up and the visitor is invited to comment on the meanings the property has evoked for them, confessions which are uploaded to the project’s website.

The work culminates in an auction of sorts. What is on sale is not the building itself but what it houses – the memories of lives lived, the past and possible futures, the meanings of the suburbs, all accrued during the making and viewing of the work.

Using the dramaturgical template developed for The Meaning of Moorabbin is Open for Inspection, a series of development projects were undertaken with Instant Cafe Theatre and associated Malaysian artists addressing themes of landscape, suburbia, memory, popular culture and local history within Malaysian culture. These projects took place in Kuala Lumpur in 2009 and 2011.