Home is rarely a neutral word. For those who have moved countries, it carries distant childhood memories and the reinvention of what home means in a different culture. Around a third of the 31 artists in Open House moved to the UK from elsewhere, including myself, the curator of the show, and that fact, though never announced, shaped the emotional temperature of the whole show. What does a kitchen table mean when it belongs to a different country than the one you grew up in? What does a bedroom window frame when the view outside is unfamiliar? These were not questions the exhibition posed directly, but a lot of the exhibited pieces were hinting at those topics.
The starting point was a deliberate inversion. One of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s earliest curatorial gestures was to activate his own kitchen, turning a private domestic space into an exhibition. We wanted to do the opposite: to take a white cube gallery and breathe domestic life into it, with walls densely covered by paintings, just as many British homes are decorated. Winns Gallery sits in a separate building in Lloyd Park in Walthamstow, a spacious venue with a little garden at the back. Not art in a gallery, but a home assembled from the work of 31 artists depicting or referencing different spaces in a home.
Those 31 artists brought with them an equally wide range of practices: oil painting, ceramics, photography, textile quilts, sculptures, participatory performance and an installation. They were at different stages of their artistic journeys and came from different cultural backgrounds. Waltham Collective’s role was not to smooth those differences out but to hold them together, the way a house holds the different lives lived inside it.
The gallery was divided into thematic rooms. Visitors moved through a kitchen and a dining room with a dining table at its centre, an installation by Caitlyn Gn. Real food was served on the table during the opening night: pizza and chicken in the middle, soft food closer to the end and food made out of paper at the very end of the table, referencing the core element of Chinese ancestor worship.
The kitchen also had an installation by Louise Richards, which was a decommissioned microwave with a video of flying utensils on the screen, placed inside the microwave. It was such a fun piece; so many people were captivated by the looped-in objects.
On the same wall were multiple pieces depicting a kitchen or objects which could be found in this space: photographs by Paul Tucker, quilts with fruits by Jess Bennett, nostalgic digital painting of a typical Eastern European kitchen with a samovar by Maria Belik, oil paintings of bowls by Thomas Hawes and other pieces. Right next to framed pieces, we located a shelf, like you can find in a regular kitchen, with ceramics by Khairana Dewi and Rebecca Thomas’s vases filled with flowers donated by Borrowed Light Floral Studio.
On the opposite wall were mainly oil paintings depicting a house from the outside or a living room space, with works by local artists Barry Bliss and Abi Huxtable. On the left of Abi’s work of a woman holding a clock, you can see four canvases by a Polish artist, Magdalena Rucińska. Her pieces reminded me a lot of René Magritte’s works because of how graphic, lonely, yet dreamy they are.
Just in front of the curtain, separating the bedroom from the rest of the gallery, we could see a wooden sculpture by Michael D. Bowles, which highlights women’s hidden domestic labour. Next to it, we placed a cabinet with other ceramic pieces, referencing the habit of putting away behind the glass the most treasured plates and cups.
Still life oil paintings set in a kitchen and a living room by Angus Forbes-Cable were making a gentle transition towards the bedroom, with a gentle screen print of domestic objects on organza by Anna Samoylova.
Visitors were invited to then go through to a bedroom, separated from the rest of the space by a curtain to emphasise its intimacy. Within the bedroom was a getting-ready corner, with the feminine pieces by Mary Modha, a space that might easily have been overlooked as decorative but was in fact one of the show’s quieter statements. The majority of participating artists are women, and the rituals of getting ready, of preparing oneself to go out, felt important to acknowledge as part of domestic life. Lily Pearl Veinia’s installation also reminded me of a messy girl’s bedroom, made out of various fabrics, found objects, a dressing table mirror and a breathing cloth doll, a creepy yet feminine detail.
In the left bedroom corner, I placed the “Red Corner” by Yana Lordovskiy, a collection of 5 mirrors of different sizes with Orthodox icons painted over. Visitors were still able to see their reflection in the frames. Right under the red corner, we located the “Shrine” by Yanire Sylva Delgado, dedicating that space to worship and spirituality from different cultures.
Outside, through a set of doors, was the little garden. Walthamstow is known for its generous green spaces and its houses with large leafy plots, and it felt right to extend the show outdoors. Magical and water-resistant objects by David Nettleingham. During the opening party, that space was fully activated with free refreshments provided by Neckstamper Brewery.
Throughout the show, a free drop-in collage station invited visitors to make their own vision of home. Waltham Collective stands for art accessibility and the collage station made the exhibition’s central question available to everyone who walked through the door, regardless of whether they came with any prior relationship to art. Visitors pinned their collages alongside the exhibited works, and by the final day, the station had become its own small collective gallery within a gallery.
What Open House kept returning to, across all its rooms and all its voices, was the idea that home is something made rather than found. It is assembled from objects, habits, memories, and the people you share space with. For a show that brought together artists from across London, the UK, and internationally (Magdalena Rucińska travelled from Poland with four of her oil paintings just to participate in the show!), that felt like the most honest thing we could say.
All photos by Lina A.
All participating artists: Abi Huxtable, Angus Forbes-Cable, Anna Samoylova, Arlau, Barry Bliss, Caitlyn Gn, David Nettleingham, Hannah Crosson, Jess Bennett, Kasia Howlett, Khairana Dewi, Lasmina Virgoe, Lily Pearl Veinia, Linda Eckardt, Lina Noueiri, Louise Richards, Maria Belik, Magdalena Rucińska, Mary Modha, Matt Noir, Michael D. Bowles, Michelle Weiner, Ngai Ning Yu, Paul Tucker, Pippa Davismoon, Rebecca Thomas, Safa Mirza, Sarah Colquhoun, Thomas Hawes, Yana Lordovskiy, Yanire Sylva Delgado.
Curated by Margarita Makhanova.
