Pop-up Zinc Houses

Charcoal Drawings

Research drawings for installation work, final year at LSAD, (2010)

charcoal on paper, 135x142cm

135x142cm

135x142cm

135x110cm

LSAD, Degree Show, June 2010

“Everyone has a public world, a private world and a secret world”.  Paula Rego

My studio practice has involved researching different dwellings and architectural domestic spaces as well as concepts of public and private boundaries.  My work combines and layers 3-D architectural installations, photography and prints, exploring, reflecting the home as container and symbol for our actions, experience and memories.



The motif of the house has a strong symbolic resonance with many contradictory meanings.  Homes are thought of as spaces of comfort and privacy- “safe as houses”- but what goes on behind walls, in contradiction to the exterior, can often be dark and ‘unhomely’.  In the same way that the exterior of the house can contradict the interior, we mask our feelings by putting up a facade to keep what is going on inside us out of public view.

The various forms of architectural representation shown in my work reflect concepts of oppositions such as containment and openness, interiority and exteriority, transparency and opacity, order and disorder.  Images of houses that cannot be reached or got into, stairs that go to nowhere, houses with no doors, houses piled on top of each other;  all these things reflect the constraints and conventions of society as well as representing the obstacles one meets in life.

Favela, 3D Installation, Mixed Media, Dimensions to suit site 

PRINTS

The layering of prints in layout and technique reflects the chaotic urban society

 

City of Prints, etching and monoprints, various dimensions



Close up of Prints



                    

                         Shanty Town 2, 25x15cm



Township

 

Shanty town





Shanty House, 15x15cm





Township House 



Through the medium of photography I have captured the light and shadows in domestic spaces, suggesting the secrets held within walls and showing the house as an animate object, living and breathing with the lives of former occupants.

“Through its light alone, the house becomes human.  It sees like a man. 

             It is an eye open to night.” Gaston Bachelard 

The main focus of my work is the marginal society: the  shantytowns, favelas or townships. All materials worked by human hands recount something about themselves and about us, to where connected ideas emerge. My work uses the cast-offs of society to construct the unregulated yet vibrant expressiveness of the human being to personalise space and to create a visible inner world.