Nest - The Kitchen (2011)

 

Site-specific installation 

 

Location: The Kitchen - No.5 Dunsmuir Grove, Bensham. Gateshead

 

Group show curated by David Goard, lead artist at Gateshead Council (2002 - 2012)

 

Six local artists were invited to create site-specific artworks in each room of the house at No.5 Dunsmuir Grove, one of 440 terraced houses in Bensham destined for demolition.

 

Some local residents welcomed the changes, others described the demolitions as a “scandalous waste”, considering it an exercise in social cleansing; many tenants evicted to make way for the new development projects.

 

‘NEST’  was a project designed to promote conversation about the changes in an area.

 

Working with themes of fragility and impermanence, destruction and renewal; my work was located in the kitchen of the property, the heart of the home and centre of day-to-day living for previous tenants. 

 

However, I was interested in understanding the space as it stood at that moment. Empty and desolate. I set out to emphasise its contours and imperfections; drawing attention to these quiet and neglected corners, adorning them and giving them a fleeting moment of care and recognition.

 

Using porcelain tea & dinner sets sourced from local charity shops, the use and treatment of the material endeavours to mirror the spaces fate in the physical act of destroying something whole, functional and in some ways beautiful. Taking a hammer to the crockery and gathering the fragments and dust into piles of debris to create something newly aesthetic but short-lived and superficial.