A multimedia, group exhibition to enjoy from the comfort of home (albeit ours, not yours). The works range from sculpture and painting to video and live performance, featuring work from the art collective baby studio (now members of House Mouse) as well as independent artists based in L.A, London and Chicago.
From the first recorded instances of visual artwork–the cave paintings of Indonesia or France–art was created in and for the home. We ask ourselves, how is our understanding of a piece of art shaped by its location and our physical relation to it? In this debut exhibition, we hope to create a space that blends the intimate and the external. Each section of the exhibition relates to our interactions with people and nature and relates to the place it occupies physically, e.g. the bedroom or the living room.
Artists in the exhibition: Sam Young, Rupam Baoni, Talia Ceravolo, Viridis Artem, Jamiee Zhuge, Nick Kasunic, Inessa Illes, and Tomal Hossain (the opening music performer).
Exhibition Brochure Copy:
THE LIVING ROOM
PORTRAITS
Stained glass is one of humanity’s most ancient art forms: from the hilt of a pharaoh's dagger to the great cathedrals of Europe and ancient, venerated mosques, stained glass has been used to honour and beautify those places where we encounter the divine. Some of the pieces include tongue-in-cheek nods to religious imagery while also celebrating the tradition of stained-glass portraiture. Using this hallowed medium for portraits and of friends and family is not just a subversion but instead reframes the home as a place of reverence too, with the object of this veneration being our loved ones.
ODES
Although odes are classically associated with music and poetry, the visual arts also strive to pay homage to the world around us. The sculptures use earthen tones and textures to celebrate the natural world. The artifice of the object honours the mud out of which it is fashioned. The paintings and photography, on the other hand, reflect man-made worlds. Where the watercolours offer expressionistic vistas of worlds we inhabit today, the photographs show an ancient venerated civilisation, now crumbling.
HOMEGOODS
Everyday objects that surround our lives are composed of an artistic value and utilitarian value. Artistic value arises from valuing the object for itself, while the utilitarian value arises from valuing it as a means towards an end. In the pre-industrial era, the distinction between the two was blurred, for every artisan would produce their goods for utility but imbue in their products an aesthetic that was unique to them. They had full responsibility for the nature of their product as a consequence of them owning their means of production. In our post-industrial era, workers are far removed from the production of the final good, playing but a miniscule and replaceable role in the complex web that constitutes the production process. Their natural creativity is suppressed by the repetitive nature of their work and overshadowed by the efficiency of the machine.
We are now seeing a resurgence of ceramics and carpentry in the art world. These pieces return to the artisanal mode of production. They prompt the viewer to ask themselves: when are your tables, your faucets, your lamps, or your iPhone considered works of art? Can we reclaim art for the workers, so that once more they may be called artisans?
THE BEDROOM
APPERCEPTION
The defining feature of the home: you. The bedroom is where you are continuously becoming yourself. This is a room for rest, rumination, reinvention: all forming invisible stitches in the fabric of time. From the most banal thoughts to fantastical dreams, our mind spends at least a third of its life in a bedroom, and often alone. The bedroom prompts the most apperception: the reflection and assimilation of the day into our sense of self, the crystallisation of events into memories, ideas—the personality.
The stark combination of red and blue in this room represents the extremes of emotion between which we vacillate. Where red can evoke the raw, bodily intensity, blue can take us to a more mystical or otherworldly place. The bedroom is often where these emotions find their unbridled release and are processed. The pieces here explore the breadth of our self-explorations: from corporeal, carnal experiences to spiritual ones, all of which can occur from the humble home.
Please enjoy and relax here, you can stand, sit or lie down anywhere you like.