“Every interior is a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residues of decorative styles that any inhabited space collects. Banal or beautiful, exquisite or sordid each says a lot about its owner and something about humanity in general.”
Richard Hamilton
The above quote forms the basis for a discussion surrounding the use of the domestic setting and it’s objects within contemporary art, literature and film to create heightened emotional responses in the viewer.
Domestic spaces provide a platform for people to express aspects of their personalities and to build relationships with other people. In his book ‘The Comfort of Things’, the anthropologist Daniel Miller presents 30 ‘portraits’ from the households and families he studied on a street in South London. The book investigates ‘how people express themselves through their possessions’ as well as the roles objects can play within a person’s life, and as a result of these things, their relationships with other people. Miller provides the reader with the opportunity to reflect on the role their own possessions play in their lives, and to consider what their choices say about the type of person they are.
The use of description in Miller’s informative, non-fiction study differs greatly to the use of description in fiction to tell a story and create tension. Descriptions of interiors are prevalent in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, his tales of murders and the supernatural all possess the ability to build tension in the imagination of the reader. In stories such as ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and ‘The Black Cat’ Poe describes the interiors as well as the events and traumas that take place in them. In ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Poe describes the state the house is in through the characters’ eyes. The mindsets of the characters are projected onto the surrounding interiors, a technique deliberately used so readers receive the descriptive elements with a more emotionally heightened response as they are able to put themselves in the shoes of the character.
The same unsettling effect is achieved in film and television, although the methods differ to those used in literature, for example, actors are able to make visible the reactions of the characters they play, something which must be imagined when reading literature. At times, the viewer is at the mercy of the visual experience on screen, for example in Shane Meadows’ television series ‘This Is England ’86’ the unfolding of a rape scene in a home is forced upon the viewer, something which is horrific and uncomfortable to watch. Meadows places the camera in the corner of the room so the audience becomes the fly on the wall, part of the decor that seems to observe and absorb the events unfolding before them. With the audience able to see the reactions of both characters they are exposed to feeling sympathy for the ‘victim’ and disgust or anger towards the ‘rapist’, this emotive technique isn’t something that is easily achieved within literature as it is then up to the reader to imagine, which differs greatly to having a visual experience.
Horror films are also able to put an audience through emotional turmoil. The recent adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel ‘The Woman in Black’ to cinema is a good example of this. Set in the late 19th Century, ‘The Woman in Black’ tells the story of Arthur Kipps, a solicitor from London, who is sent to the house of a recently deceased client to retrieve her legal documents. The first view of the house’s exterior immediately creates an uneasy feeling in the audience; it’s looming gothic architecture and surrounding swirls of fog suggest it has a haunted history and conceals something within its walls.
Returning to the role of objects, in this example the possessions within the house are portrayed as relics of a person no longer living. The rooms in the house reveal clues to the lives of the people who once lived there, and unleash the emotions of what dark presence resides in them. An example of this is the discovery of a child's nursery; Arthur confronts the epicentre of the supernatural activity.
A nursery is a space that is normally associated with innocent and pleasant connotations of childhood, however, the nursery Arthur confronts possesses none of these qualities, this creates something that the audience can react to as they would be familiar with the pre-conceived ideas of a nursery.
Lit by atmospheric candle-light, strange shapes and shadows are thrown across the walls, the toys of someone's childhood appear monstrous and threatening in the darkness.
The objects present a personal history and play a role of bearing witness to, or in this case act as accomplice for, the paranormal activities within the house.
One contemporary artist who also deals with the power of personal objects is Song Dong, who currently has an exhibition at the Barbican Curve gallery called ‘Waste Not’ which is a display of everything his late mother owned.
After the death of his father, Dong encouraged his mother to work with him to make her possessions ‘a work of art’. Not only did this present his mother with the chance to organise her memories, but it also brought both of them together as she helped to install the objects at the Tokyo Gallery. Song Dong remade the work at the Barbican with his wife and his sister after the sudden death of his mother. This information is important for the viewer to know as the emotional weight of the objects can then begin to be understood. The viewer considers the artist in the remaking of the work, by bringing the family together to install it they are all given the opportunity to reflect on their history and memories with the objects. There is an interesting relationship between the objects and the viewer as a bond is made to a woman who was never known to them. The exhibition can also raise questions within visitors regarding the importance of their own possessions; would their objects have the ability to tell the personal history they contain? Similar to the previous example of questions that can be raised reading Daniel Miller’s work.
Returning to the idea of objects as ‘witnesses’, the artist Daniel Silver creates stone ‘heads’, each referencing a particular person. He worked from photographs of criminals on death row and produced disfigured, ambiguous forms. In an essay on his body of work titled ‘Demos’, Silver has described his intention to present his objects as ‘more than a mere portrait’. He explains that he wants his works to ‘act as both emblems of their time and to carry a vital psychological charge’. Talking about his sculptures as witnesses, Silver remarks;
‘[T]hey all know that something has happened, and they have a collective knowledge or memory. They seem to share this with us, but feel to be witholding it at the same time.’
Another contemporary artist who’s work deals with the role of objects is ceramic artist Ruth Claxton. Her installation for her exhibition ‘Lands End’ at Ikon Gallery used ceramic figurines which had a domestic familiarity to them. However, the decorative mutations she made to their heads and faces creates an interesting pull between fantasy and reality. Claxton is aware her work plays on the cultural familiarity of the ceramic figurines, she comments on this saying;
‘They have a relationship to most people’s personal histories, which is useful as it means people immediately assume they know what they are looking at when they see them in the work.’
This work has the potential to spark an uncanny experience in viewers as what they find to be familiar at first is realised to be something rather unfamiliar, ‘unheimlich’. The theme of the uncanny can link together many of the references discussed; in the horror genre of both literature and film, the uncanny or strangely familiar is used to create a feeling of unease within its audience. The theme of the interior and the objects within that have been discussed also lends itself to uncanny experience, the references mentioned take a setting or possessions that are familiar to many, and through the use of narrative and manipulation, turn them into something strangely unfamiliar. They also have the ability to create this response by making visible something which isn’t normally present, such as the paranormal presence in ‘The Woman in Black’.
This discussion has opened up many avenues for investigation in areas which branch off from those mentioned. The topic of the interior extends throughout history and many opinions have been formed on the aesthetics of the home - which of course have changed with the times - however, it also brings to mind the differences in social classes, prevalent in the choices made and financial circumstances when decorating the home, and the power struggle of a hierarchy in which objects can be placed in terms of value and taste.
Possessions as a subject can be broadly explored in terms of collecting, display and taste, as well as the relationship with their placement or role within the home. The owner of the objects is another branch of interest. Their psychological relationship with the things they own is a large topic for discussion which can include the unconscious, the obsessive impulse and the nature of the explanations they give for their interests/habits.
Another interest is the role of objects and interiors in their connection to the ‘uncanny’, paranormal or religion. Shrines and devotions explore the beliefs and obsessions of people and blur the lines between fantasy and reality. This crossover leads to the investigation of human desires and how they are fulfilled, if at all, and whether they are based on aesthetics, the sexual or possibly the abject. All of the above are ideas which possess longevity and will be pursued in the near future.
