Domesticity - So Far

I don't wish or think it possible to conclude my thoughts on the domestic and domesticity in art, yet, if at all. This therefore is not a conclusion but a very early stage of proposing key areas that interest me.

I think, adversely, as it is the least directly 'domestic' piece - Anthony McCall's 'line Describing a Cone', is the influence that gives me the most insight into and clarification of my ideas and work so far. Following are aspects of his work that i am very interested in I think link with my previous and/or where i wish to take it:

• you may approach his sculpture as an onlooker and participant - viewing how others interact with the piece and dealing with it yourself - in both cases you may observe directly and indirectly how the piece is altered by the person and visa versa. Both the nature of the piece and person are interlinked and determine each other.
• It feels like a very private and intimate space when inside the sculpture but its setting is extremely public
• The temporal nature of space
• Dealing with the domestic everyday in a way that strips it of its function and familiarity

It is these aspects of the domestic that I wish to focus on with more awareness and clarity as I now proceed with my work.

The Private is Political

'Politics in general is...about the visibilities of the places and abilities of the body in those places, about the partition of private and public spaces, about the very configuration of the visible and the relation of the visible to what can be said about it'.


Ranciere, Jacques. 'Ten These on Politics', Theory and Event Vol. 6 No. 4 (2004)

Haegue Yang - Defined Space

In a similar approach as minimalism, Haegue Yang views subjectivity as a key element in the definition of space. Her 'Dress Vehicles' series in particular is defined by this concept. The wheeled structures are constructed from aluminium frames, blinds and intricate knotted textiles.The sculptures are animated by performers who are invited to choreograph their own movements in the space, creating a relationship between performer and object as they ‘dance’ together. A programme of moving lights go to further animate the sculptures, the performers and the space itself. This will be triggered by the sound created from a drum-kit and microphone that the visitors are invited to interact with. This piece is therefore defined by the occupier and the audience and thus seems to suggest that our identity and behaviour is correspondent with our domestic environment. 

Perhaps my interest in the domestic stems from a desire to understand the influences that define human character and behaviour. Or maybe it is the need for an occupier to determine and give value to private space concerns me?

Question:  Do human actions shape rooms, or do rooms shape human actions?

Haegue Yang

Liam Gillick

Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing - Boris Arvatov

Isa Genzken - inside out

Ear: the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanicmembrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanicvibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.

Sensitised to register the external vibrations of the environment, the ear also internalises the word outside it: it is a figure of the inside out and these pictures therefore exhibit the precarious threshold between public and private life. It is with a consideration of this instrumental process that we can begin to view in Genzken's work an appeal to architectural space relative to the mythical divide between public and private. 

Her following work, a series of 'self portraits' of a kind - x-rays of her head - along with photographs of the facades of New York buildings extend this. Here the image of a head acts as an internal landscape, poised in relation to the blunt and external surfaces of New York's architecture. The interior space - generally perceived as private - is intertwined with the public space of the architectural environment.

Much of Genzken's following work has progressively collapsed these two areas of spatial experience. With the Urlaub series, for example, Genzken presents a perspective into the workings of domestic life and its projections; here the external constructions of vacation homes can be seen to act as mirrors for fantasies of retreat from the outside world. In her wider assemblages the creation of suggestive space acts as a means for facilitating this collision. Plinths stand as neutral development stands for construction; anonymous towers reflective of power and autonomy become burdened with articles of the personal. In Mutter Mit Kind, Genzken's minimalist box is both domestic interior, and psychological projection, incorporating furniture, children's toys, and a madonna-like image, suggestive of a disrupted alter, projecting an element of vulnerability and instability. Genzken's installation becomes simultaneously painterly and architectural: her mirror plates like translucent building facades, highlighting this illusion between flat and perceived space. 

A reference to architecture can be seen to underly all of these pieces and supports her concern with the concept of the social sphere. Genzken's initial engagement with minimalism can be seen as vital to this. Following Carl Andre's call for 'sculpture as space' Minimalism was necessarily an art of location: of the ways in which the body registered space as it was shaped by those sculptural objects. The movement of the body in space served to measure that relationship, which was seen to be in continuous flux depending on the conditions. 

To conclude her work may be summarised as a focus on the ways in which the reality that surrounds and shapes us operate: architecture, design, advertising, media sociopolitical themes and fields of tension linked with them - significantly tensions between private and public. 

My interest in the domestic may therefore be promoted by its relationship with the exterior. From a sociological perspective it could posses for me the role of a personal haven of individuality and subjectivity. However my interest in repetition which is bred from the industrial organs, suggests that perhaps it is the ultimate reflection of the exterior within the interior that interests me?

Questions: How do the places where we live from the essence of our conception of space?