The exhibition presents work that evokes ideas of the home from various perspectives —
the emotional, historical, geographical, material, and architectural — and borrows its title
from a chapter of the Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. This defining text of French
thought explores small and not so small spaces in and around the home — rooms, dens,
huts, nests and cupboards — in order to understand ideas of selfhood and identity. In
particular the book considers how the recollection of these spaces shape our minds. This
text is as resonant in 2020 as it was when it was first published in 1958.

Zoë Carlon’s paintings draw inspiration from spaces that are both public and private.
Functional and transient, waiting rooms or cruise ship bars induce a sense of isolation and
solitude. Working from observation and memory, she creates a relationship between the
interior and the exterior (or the reverse), exploring surface, depth, figuration and
abstraction. Succinctly composed, these paintings respond to the changing light and the
cropped view makes us aware that we only have a partial, limited view.

Charlotte Edey explores themes of femininity and identity. She does this across a series of
drawings and uses the traditionally gendered mediums of embroidery, weaving and textile;
which throughout history have had a recurring presence in domestic spaces. In contrast to
the expansive wall tapestries that may come to mind, her meditative and intricate work
suggests a spiritual destination that invites one to come closer and look at every individual
woven thread or pencil mark.

Simon Linington remembers his grandfather filling glass tubes with coloured sands and
selling them as souvenirs to tourists. Early encounters with these objects, composed of
the principal materials of his birthplace (Isle of Wight), established a meeting point of
material and place. It is this collecting and classifying of material debris (and sometimes
studio detritus) that form the core of his practice and exploration of personal and
collective memory.

Ficus Interfaith combine individual and shared interactions with natural history and
traditional craft. They apply terrazzo, an ancient and contemporary technique of creating
floors, for the purposes of sculpture. The framed sculptures are formed from pulverised
material, overlaid with cement aggregate, and take a traditional motif of Mesopotamian
culture — in this case a bucket and cone, an image often found at ritually significant areas
of the home.

Matthew Peers’s sculptures are composed of familiar, everyday materials. Elusive in their
architectural references, thoughts of habitation come to mind, from the past or the future.
Though the structures are worked on simultaneously in the studio, forming converging or diverging dialogues in response to one another, they have their own unique character and
energy. They are a step away from a world of excess; recognisable materials are
transformed and reconfigured into new possibilities and narratives.