Image Credit Steve Brown
2026 Open Exhibition Winner Rachel J. O'Connor and Mayor Sue Baker, with the Million Dollar Housecoat
Melbourne multi-disciplinary artist, Rachel J. O’Connor has won the 2026 Frankston Arts Centre’s Open Exhibition with her textile work, Million Dollar Housecoat. She receives $1000 and her own exhibition at Cube 37 next year. She was bowled over by the win. Rachel was more than happy just to participate. “It was an honour to be exhibiting with artists of such a high calibre,” she says.
This was the first time Rachel had entered the Open Exhibition and her first time making a blanket jacket in a patchwork style. The piece is a wearable sculpture made from reclaimed blankets, vintage buttons, found appliqué fabrics and digitally printed photos of people protesting about rising rents and the current housing crisis in Australia.
She found the theme, ‘no place like home’ very inspiring because it’s so open to interpretation. Million Dollar Housecoat carries many stories. “It’s about who gets access to housing. What is luxury? What is necessity? I like the idea of textiles in relationship with housing because we live in our clothes. For some people their clothes are their only home,” she says. Rachel wanted to create something that spoke directly to the material world.
In this work, the blanket becomes a complex metaphor representing basic warmth and comfort, security and protection juxtaposed to housing insecurity and homelessness. While Million Dollar Housecoat is a beautiful, warm, comfortable fashion item featuring quintessential Australian suburban houses, it hides an uncomfortable truth inside. The interior is an expansive bay view exemplifying beauty and privilege. With its broad socioeconomic spectrum, Frankston has both extremes.
Rachel wanted to make a piece of art that created open-ended questions about how art impacts life and the environment and how wearable art relates to the body in a very personal way. She enjoyed making a tactile three-dimensional object as a contrast and relief to the two-dimensional world where everything revolves around a flat screen. Million Dollar Housecoat calls the viewers’ attention back to a real object that can be felt, not just viewed.
“I love art because it’s an amazing way to express feelings, concepts and ideas that can be communicated in a more layered way. I also love the connection art has with language. It has a feeling of alchemy. And it’s just fun. I’ve been inspired by other artists and that drives me to make more work,” she says.
Art has been part of Rachel’s world since childhood. “I always wanted to be an artist. I enjoyed being creative. I loved school and making projects,” she says. It probably helped that she comes from a creative family. Her father was an architect (now retired). Her mother is a painter.
Rachel studied VCE Studio Art and Textiles in high school. Textiles were her favourite medium. She loved sewing. At 16, she won a National Gallery of Australia Summer School Scholarship and spent two weeks studying art at NGA in Canberra. The following year she was awarded an Australian National University Scholarship. She returned to Canberra where she earned a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours and was awarded the University Medal. She completed a Diploma of Visual Art in Painting and a Graduate Certificate in Public Art from RMIT in 2009. Rachel also completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts in 2021.
Rachel has had many solo exhibitions and been part of numerous group exhibitions over the years, but she isn’t a full-time artist. She’s a Curriculum Developer for TAFE across a broad range of subjects. She works four days in that job and has one day to escape to her Coburg Studio to make art. Despite the limited time, her mind is always whirring with new ideas. “I feel like my style is always evolving. As an artist, I think it’s important to be trying new mediums and styles,” she says.
For her exhibition at Cube 37 in 2027, she’d like her work to centre on Frankston. She wants to focus on textile art – maybe some jackets, perhaps a blanket mural and also a video project and some drawings to showcase the breadth of her artistic talents. She also likes the idea of creating a community arts project and has applied for a grant to potentially bring that to fruition.
While her sole focus over the next year will be making the new exhibition for Cube 37, she likes the notion of leaving an artistic legacy. What she’d like to leave behind is work that considers inclusion and sustainability. Million Dollar Housecoat is a perfect illustration of her humanist ethos.
Don’t miss the opportunity to see this beautiful work at Frankston Arts Centre’s Cube 37 before the show closes on August 28. Entry is free. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10-5.
ANDREA LOUISE THOMAS