The first thing planned in our kitchen was the largest table we could afford and could fit into the available space. Secondly was the inclusion of a large book-case filled with artist's monographs and exhibition catalogues, books on cooking, travel, gardening, poetry and a large collection of reference books. Both can be regarded as facilitators; one a support for doing and the other as support for knowledge. In many ways the kitchen and what happens here can be seen to represent in microcosm, all the other general activities barring cleansing and sleep, which occur throughout the larger house. A week can easily go by before I realise that I've not ventured into the upper floor at all. The kitchen functions not merely as place of food preparation and consumption but as a vibrant space which adapts and enables a much wider range of activities to happen.
John Berger, writing about 'home' in a short essay in his book 'And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos', quotes Mircea Eliade, a Romanian historian, who states that, "home was established at the centre of the real. In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal". Eliade writes on how the home was the place from which the world could be 'founded' and as a consequence, where the external world could be deciphered and made sense of.
The kitchen in my house functions as a place where things, ideas, and opinions are digested both literally and metaphorically; the external world is projected and discussed through the lens of the kitchen, in similar fashion as Patrick Geddes's* camera obscura atop his Outlook Tower projected images of 19th century Edinburgh for the inhabitants to observe their environs and recognise their standing and relationships within local society.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were surely aware of Geddes' socio-political theories when they included a camera obscura in a scene in their groundbreaking 1947 film 'A Matter of Life and Death' in which Roger Livesey's doctor uses the apparatus to observe his 'district' and its' inhabitants; his camera obscura seemingly so incisive as to facilitate diagnosis.
Both Geddes and Livesey's character could easily be (mis)understood as benign God-like beings. Some would describe Geddes' theories on social housing, town planning, education and environmental improving as social engineering, no matter how enlightened and contemporaneous his thinking may seem today. Geddes's ideas have continually attracted criticism for being obfuscate and disjointed; he seemed unable to distill all his many ideas regarding his innovative view of the world into cohesion, or are often dismissed as being a product of historical (Imperialistic) contexts no longer relevant. Certain aspects of his theories on housing planning and environmentalism however, undoubtably still have a great deal of currency for today's social and ecological reform movements; the phrase 'Think Global, Act Local' was first coined by Patrick Geddes whilst Professor of Botany at University College Dundee from 1888 to 1919.
Embedding myself as an artist in the 'local/locale' means that I have unintentionally been following some Geddessian tenets for a long time, wherein Place, Work and Folk are all equal and inter-dependent.
Place (home/studio) is where I make the Work (art) which is often concerned about Place (home/garden) and their inhabitants (Folk). Home continues to be a lens through which the world is examined and mediated. The Dutch artist Vermeer, amongst many others, used various forms of camera obscura to get things 'just right'; sometimes Home is the only place where things can be put into perspective.
* Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), Scottish biologist, geographer, sociologist and educator is recognised as the father
of modern town and urban planning theory.