Inhabit
Rebecca Bladen
23
February 2011
23
February
2011
12
March 2011
Gallery 2
Inhabit is a reflection on ideas of uncertainty and crisis, in particular the role played by the home, by the domestic, in an age in which we are increasingly stranded without a comprehensive system of guidance and truth.
Our homes become a repository for our memories and the expression of our desires and self-image. We surround ourselves with that which we deem precious – photographs of loved ones, collections of plastic trinkets – intuitively gathering objects together, creating a space of sanctuary and protection.
Inhabit is as much an investigation into the quirks of memory and imagination as it is a reflection on the meaning of inhabited space. The evocation of a larger narrative through a banal fragment is a characteristic of modern allegory as defined by Walter Benjamin – these drawings are mere suggestions, scenes permeated by narrative disjunction and inconclusiveness that leave the task of deciphering to the viewer. Viewers are presented with images of rooms and the closely packed connections of history they might contain. As such, they are gently prompted to trace connections between the drawings and to speculate on the lives that have been lived or are being lived within the spaces depicted.
Inhabit is a reflection on ideas of uncertainty and crisis, in particular the role played by the home, by the domestic, in an age in which we are increasingly stranded without a comprehensive system of guidance and truth.
Our homes become a repository for our memories and the expression of our desires and self-image. We surround ourselves with that which we deem precious – photographs of loved ones, collections of plastic trinkets – intuitively gathering objects together, creating a space of sanctuary and protection.
Inhabit is as much an investigation into the quirks of memory and imagination as it is a reflection on the meaning of inhabited space. The evocation of a larger narrative through a banal fragment is a characteristic of modern allegory as defined by Walter Benjamin – these drawings are mere suggestions, scenes permeated by narrative disjunction and inconclusiveness that leave the task of deciphering to the viewer. Viewers are presented with images of rooms and the closely packed connections of history they might contain. As such, they are gently prompted to trace connections between the drawings and to speculate on the lives that have been lived or are being lived within the spaces depicted.