The first thing visitors to the latest exhibition at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) see is a large, traditional coir door mat emblazoned with words from former Victorian Supreme Court justice Kevin Bell.

The quote reads: "In Australia, the origin of the idea that housing is to be valued primarily as a commodity for producing private wealth is colonisation. It is part of our creation story."

Cross the welcome mat and the visitor is in Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Alana Hunt's exhibition, A Deceptively Simple Need, which explores the housing shortage and wealth accumulation in Australia.

"The exhibition itself is about the very genuine need for home that all of us have, but the inherent violence of that when it's on someone else's land," Hunt said.

" Within a settler-colonial

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