It was brought to my attention that there was some construction/destruction work occurring on one of the houses in Hampton Drive and that it resembled an open fronted dolls' house. Although this was not particularly in keeping with our ideas for our #houseparadox, I decided to have a look and take a couple of pictures...
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| 'Open House' - Teatime and Tide (Nicholas Godsell) |
Interesting that you describe this image of an older house rebuild as "Open House" as this for me represents a paradox of our house expectations. Houses are generally fairly territorial, personal and private spaces. Open house/studio is of course something artists do, and I wonder if it's a really comfortable thing having "strangers" arrive on your patch, disrupting family life, to look at your art in a fairly stage managed situation!
ReplyDeleteOur houses are space into which we invite people we want/need to share with temporarily. Abandoned houses, up for rebuilding like this one, are depersonalised. I contrast it with images of family homes with walls torn off by conflict (as in the Blitz) where privacy is exposed to the gaze of anyone.
A child's open-fronted doll's house offers a limited involvement - what you see is what you get. Much more exciting to have one where you "open the box" and engage with the extended possibilities of creative play, which is vital to us artists!