“The dolls house presents an idealistic version of life far removed from unbiased, objective reality.”
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. (1993)
In the body of work Topography of the Mundane, doll’s house furniture collected from the attic of my parent’s home is used to create small-scale worlds within the rural landscape. The work stems from my time at home as a new mother and the rituals and repetitions of ‘home-work’.
The photographs aim to be both seductive and subversive. On the one hand, the small-scale dioramas present the domesticated space as that of order and control, whilst on the other hand this reduction in scale distorts the time and space relations of the ‘everyday’ world.
The series of C-Type photographs allude to a psychological tension between this interior and exterior space, exploring ideas of entrapment and a longing for release.
From the early seventeenth century, furnishing a doll’s house was a fashionable and expensive hobby for gentlemen eager to demonstrate their wealth and social status. As well as a ‘toy’ for the wealthy classes, the doll’s house provided visual instruction for the domestic servants and young women. A world within a world, today we find the doll’s house at the beginning and ending of life: the childhood of the self and as a ‘past-time’ of the retired or elderly.
As well as pointing to themes of wealth and nostalgia, the work is concerned with ideas about human individuality and potential.
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. (1993)
In the body of work Topography of the Mundane, doll’s house furniture collected from the attic of my parent’s home is used to create small-scale worlds within the rural landscape. The work stems from my time at home as a new mother and the rituals and repetitions of ‘home-work’.
The photographs aim to be both seductive and subversive. On the one hand, the small-scale dioramas present the domesticated space as that of order and control, whilst on the other hand this reduction in scale distorts the time and space relations of the ‘everyday’ world.
The series of C-Type photographs allude to a psychological tension between this interior and exterior space, exploring ideas of entrapment and a longing for release.
From the early seventeenth century, furnishing a doll’s house was a fashionable and expensive hobby for gentlemen eager to demonstrate their wealth and social status. As well as a ‘toy’ for the wealthy classes, the doll’s house provided visual instruction for the domestic servants and young women. A world within a world, today we find the doll’s house at the beginning and ending of life: the childhood of the self and as a ‘past-time’ of the retired or elderly.
As well as pointing to themes of wealth and nostalgia, the work is concerned with ideas about human individuality and potential.