Display

Description

In offsite projects for CGP London, I have produced a series of live installations in my own domestic space, introducing architectural interventions and manipulating the comparative levels of display of ‘the museum’ contents: the visitors and the inhabitants.

In Display I wanted the work to become an exploration of intimacy/emotional engagement/creation of value, by questioning these qualities of our attention and focus.

At the time, I was reading Norman Bryson’s book Looking at the Overlooked (1990) and I was drawn to his comments on how ‘the intimacy of the household is broken apart by display’ in a manner which disguises the human hand and the ordinary gestures of living; my ideas of display were characterised by the distanced, cool and self-conscious aesthetic of a retail space or a gallery where the display was ‘for visitors’. (p161). Bryson’s associated ‘display’ (in still life) with the rich, theatrical, worldly and male. Unlike Bryson, in display, the ‘ordinary gestures of living’ was found in mess and not in domestic order. In my busy and chaotic house notions of housework were often absent. Bryson discusses disorder as traditionally a masculine ‘refusal to harmonise with domestic space’ rather than reflecting a pan-human energy and truthfulness which is what I hoped my own disorder would point to and illuminate.

Fran Cottell in House: from display to BACK to FRONT, ktpresss

Produced For

A CGPLondon Offsite Project

Collaborators

Mike Richards, Maisie Richards Cottell, Lulu Richards Cottell

Credits

Photography: Mark Harwood

Related Artworks

Still Live, 2003
Collecting Time: the Living and the Dead, 2005
A (photographic) Collection of Curators Heads, 2005
4th project, 2006
BACK to FRONT, 2011
View, 2001
Forced Entry, 2017
House: From Display to BACK to FRONT, 2012
Fran Cottell: The House Projects, 2021
A (photographic) Collection of Curators Heads, 2005
4th project, 2006
Artist in Occupation, 2003
Still Live, 2003
BACK to FRONT, 2011
Collecting Time: the Living and the Dead, 2005
Forced Entry, 2017
House: From Display to BACK to FRONT, 2012