House
(a series of 17 images)
Maggy Milner 2005
The Utopian view of the house defines an aura of safety and privacy. The “house” is a place in which we choose to eat, sleep, dream and determines our territory, both as individuals, and in cultural terms.
The backdrop of the empty house, fitted the themes I wished to portray. This particular house was between occupancies, poised between past and present. As I worked in the house, I became aware of scuffs and stains and traces of a past. The house, though empty, was “lived in”. My aim was to place significant domestic objects in the various spaces. As on a film or theatre set, these objects could suggest possible narrative or scenarios. I wished to create a tension; a sense of a moment poised between past and future .......a room left suddenly, a game disturbed, a spoon dropped on bare boards, a book laid down....... There is a powerful stillness, as in Hopper’s interiors. The moment hangs in time. There is a sense of loneliness, silence, suspense. The room with the water bowl and soap denotes confinement. The radio ariel extended upwards reminds the viewer of the exterior world. The rooms with the flowers, or night lights evoke a vigil or lament or hope. There is often a simplicity, a barrenness, an austerity. The viewer can survey several interior spaces in the house but can only perceive the outside world through a veiled window or fleeting light.
In each interior the viewer will discover peaches, sometimes obvious, sometimes less so. Their perverse fleshy presence (implying the present) provides a paradox, an irony in these worn, linear spaces.
Images were produced, firstly using traditional photographic techniques and then digitally manipulated. Prints are archival pigment on heavyweight acid free cotton rag paper utilising the latest fine-art digital print making techniques and are signed and numbered.
Framed sizes: A1 (image size A2). A2 (image size A3)