Project - 'Home'

Home...it's a theme that has been constantly tugging at me, calling out for my full attention, creeping into my thoughts every day. I was obsessively looking through interior magazines trying to figure out why certain pictures of interiors caught my attention. The interest has always been there, but moving house myself, drawing up a list of the things I wanted from my new home, focusing on all the details, seemed to magnify it.

So this summer I gave myself over to it. It felt like the time was right to completely embrace this theme and so I set about compiling some research material for total immersion:-

The first book was The Making of Home by Judith Flanders which charts the evolution of the house into the homes that we know today. Next up was Playing at Home by Gill Perry which explores the different ways in which artists have engaged with this theme - I'm not alone in my obsessive fascination. Then I switched to a novel, Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor, a thriller set in London in1934. The central character, Lydia Langstone, is desperate for 'a room of one's own', inspired by Virginia Woolf's essay of that same name, which of course was next on my reading list. This is a book I had been intending to read for years so I turned the pages with great pleasure and satisfaction.

And so it was finally time to make a start on the artwork itself, which I had decided to create as a series of six cardboard boxes. I've always been enchanted by dolls houses and felt that using cardboard boxes links back to childhood memories of making rudimentary houses and dens, our first attempts at home. I also like to use materials that are readily available, discarded even, and transform them into something unique and tangible.

The first step, on the first box, was to open it completely flat and paint the interior surfaces. Once dry, this was then folded back together and the interior constructed.

This is where my collection of magazines came into their own, providing the furnishings for my little 'Home' box. I then sketched a figure to inhabit the space, put her in position, and sealed it all up with the only opening being a little window. This is a really important aspect of the piece - you long to see everything but are only allowed a little glimpse; like passing a house at night with a warm and welcoming lamp lighting up the scene - you can't help looking, but you can't see everything; And home is bound up in our memories - as we look back through time these memories are only ever experienced as glimpses.

Amanda xxx