You wake up early each morning to the sound of an electric alarm clock, the radio turns itself on. The good morning radio mixes with the sound of birds, or in winter, the eerie silence of a sealed heated room. Natural gas from a time forgotten is now tallied up on an email bill for you to lament, before you put your phone on the kitchen counter and make a cup of coffee. You take a picture of an old car that’s pulled up outside your window, an observation that now occupies a data center somewhere… somewhere I’m not sure. There are physical memories all around you, but you have become numb to seeing them: old toys, photographs, stains, and adverts sneak slowly into your living room. Before you leave the house, you hear the metallic slip of the letterbox. There on the doormat, a letter addressed to someone else, maybe an old occupant, this home is never truly your own.
This show was an attempt to explore domestic spaces as being far from sealed environments, to navigate the porousness of the home. We often think of homes as somewhat sealed environments, and we find comfort in their refuge. We create home lives, worlds which exist to us fully incubated within our four walls, however our domestic spaces are deeply affected by greater political and social forces and haunted by memories and narratives. The home is fed by umbilical cord which connects it to the shaping forces of the outside world, and we wanted to explore how these influences intersect with our memories and notions of domesticity.
My House at Home brought together the work of eight student artists and hosted readings of written work. The show was organized with the Launderette space in mind as we utilized the homely layout of the space and its many rooms. Lamp-lit spaces, storage like installs and zombie-ish arts and crafts were all key parts of the show as we sought to evoke a sense of a haunting within the space.
Contributing artists: Nancy Gonzalez, George Lawrence, William Hilless, Barnaby Prendergast, George Hilless, Amelia Gardner, Alfonso Paa, Esme Convery
Curated by: Will and George Hilless
Special thanks to Helen Acklam
