Racz, I 2015, ‘Objects, Sentiment and Memory’, in Art and the Home: Comfort Alienation and the Everyday, I.B Tauris & Co Ltd, London
This paper is a response to the chapter ‘Objects, Sentiment and Memory’ by Imogen Racz and includes an evaluation of its relevance to my essay theme of the place.
How to turn a house into a home? Imogen Racz explains that a home contains a human being but is also within a human being. It is a place people can represent themselves from birth to death by all the material things in the house, and not only that, but home can be threatening as well, and that is all decided by the memory between people and environment. In the text, Racz writes and as Daniel Miller’s research demonstrated that, “homes are a reflection of their owners, and most important are the material things that make up their everyday worlds (p. 176).” Imogen Racz provides four sections in this chapter: ‘Object and Identity’, ‘The Commonplace’, ‘Display’ and ‘Vessels’ to discuss the relationship of people to the environment they live in.
This chapter will be useful for my essay because it provides an argument that there is a relationship between memories and objects. “Identical objects can be viewed in distinct ways”. (p.156) Because every different individual user becomes fused on different meanings and memories into an object, they supplement each other.
The turning of a house-place into a home-place plays an essential part in creating a place where one’s identity is developed, and one can live comfortably. Objects in the home spaces are diverse and are loved for several reasons cited in the book; the reasons include; choosing the object in a way linked with our troubles, they are chosen because of their personal perceived values, some objects are chosen to be displayed on special occasions. In contrast, other objects are inexpensive but used frequently forming an essential part of objects in the place or home.
(Judy Attfield, p.156), objects are everyday tools that make life easier, where she called this scenario as “lower-case-things” they included objects in the house like kitchen implements, mugs, and plastic bottles. She also talked about things with attitude, this kind of objects are designed and mostly overdesigned to represent a form of style of life in the home space, the usage of this objects, therefore, holds perceptible memories of their usage.
The discussions into this chapter of the book on objects and space are divided into four; that is, objects and identity, the commonplace, displays, and vessels.
Objects and identity, commonplace and display of these objects are discussed as follows: In mass-production-most domestic objects are batch produced, but identical objects having bought by the individual people, they view them in dissimilar ways, putting significances and remembrances to them. Some have meanings as trophies won in the public world. Looking at plastic; “it is functional, universal, and yet in the minds of many, obscure, it carries little ritual significance, but in the industrialized world it has taken over from clay”. Looking at clay; it is essential to human existence, though, through the action of fire, it is moulded into cups and plates for carrying food and drinks. Ceramics provide comfort and objects from ceramics are part of personal and family rituals, and status. They are displayed with respect, and ceramics are glazed to create coloured skin and decorative features that add value to its nature. Silver is perceived as celebratory material and frequently used for trophies, for special occasions, and for demonstrating status. Mass production has made silver readily available to a large population and has reduced its value, and even decorated silver has become abundant.
Movement with objects: research indicates that in the mobile society; Americans on average move fourteen times in their lives and the British eight times, therefore objects become the balance that people bring with them to provide a sense of the link between the past and the future (p. 157). Thus, the projection of ideas and feelings onto these objects, their forms, and functions, and their universality have proved to be rich field of exploration for artists.
Objects stand-in for the place of memories and sentiments and can appear domestic and “safe” while enabling comment on particular social and political issues.
“The importance of domestic objects to people has been demonstrated by the anthropologist Daniel Miller who focused on these objects and how they were chosen, placed, ordered, and spaced out”. As the geographer Doreen Massey discussed in the early 1990, the spaced time compression in the post-modern era, led to a disintegration of local cultures and loss of sense of place outside the home. She and other researchers have learnt that to hostage the general sense of disorientation, and there has been a compensatory drive to create a centred and stable identity by developing one’s place. Miller’s study found that although neighbours are no longer significant, people’s relationships are critical to their contentment in life, and that is central to this own ethnic and social backgrounds. It is through giving and receiving, rituals, making objects, and social and material routines that order and meaning are created in people’s lives.
Miller cited an example of someone whose flat was devoid of any form of ornamentation that went beyond a desire for a clean, minimal space. There is no sense of the person as the others who define one’s boundary and extent. It is a show of blankness, a show of life with unfulfilled responsibility and lack of boundaries and self-identity. Another example was an elderly family that receives objects from friends and relatives that they used to bridge and bond social relationships. The care is given to these objects matched that given to people.
The discussion cited in chapter p.159. Artist addressed different agenda from the objects of the past that they have in their possession, they all created work that was conceptual and concerned with addressing ideas from outside the boundaries of art, including social issues, science, spirituality and archaeology. Art was discussed largely in journals like art-monthly (p.159) with some articles promoting traditional materials like stone and bronze.
In 1982 Tony Cragg wrote that his interest was man’s relationship to his environment. He felt that living among plastic manifested environment is so poor that was almost embarrassing to consider its metaphysical, poetic, and mythological aspects. Tony said that in this environment people make and reuse plastics as sculptures are made from salvaged plastics then decorated with colours. Cragg believes that it can sow the seeds for change by suggesting some human significance, life, and meaning. In the era 1970s to 1990, Cragg’s work addressed environmental concerns by displaying the debris of industrial production. Cragg brought together fragments and stacked, arranged or heaped them into geometric forms. Newstones (1978) humorously references both land art and minimalism in the plastic pieces arranged across the gallery floor in an open formation, within a rectangular shape. These are things that people had bought to aid their lives, tools to make things happen quickly or to support bodily comfort, rather than items with sentimental value. As Tomas Maldonado has said, “the idea of comfort and hygiene is available for all in modern concept, created since industrialization as well as objects that are part of the staff of life most people single out particular objects that give order to their experiences and aspirations.
Objects inside the house which has been neglected also shows that the relationship with the owner has been severed, and they have become overlooked and forgotten. Tom Leddy argued that our first childhood aesthetic experience is about cleanliness and tidiness we absorb this to make us arrange things in order and care for different objects and to make sense of home in our environment.
Display: The work of Cragg also reveals the use of free space of the gallery, well taken care of and protected, this alone has reversed the usual human hierarchies and view of objects being that they were at some point fragments plastics but now sculptures on shelves being respected and cared for. “It is very important to have first-order experiences; seeing, touching, smelling, hearing with objects and images and to let that experience register.”
Whiteread experimented with different materials in her studio, and she enjoyed the accidents and chance of them happening. Her result came up with three terms; Line up, Focus, and Scatter. Line up (2007-8) is made up of eighteen casts taken from pieces of cardboard tubing, line up against each other on a shelf. Made of plaster, resin, wood, and metal, the individual objects are coloured-yellow, ochre, grape, and red. Focus (2008) consists of a pale upright cuboid a bright-yellow vessel resembling an upside-down Florence flask, and a cube cast from a small box, arranged on a shelf. Scatter (2008) has 15 elements set on a shelf each with different colours, textures, and densities but all small, and domestic in scale.
Vessels: “One of the most important forms of object within the home is the vessel, the vessel has been employed for utility and domestic display, and the surfaces have been used to express political and social issues” (p.176). Graduates from RCA continued to make work that was domestic in scale, and explored the vessel form in non-functional and frequently abstract work. Martina Margetts agued in her catalogue essay that the developments in art and ceramics over the last decade and a half meant that the role of ceramics could be more open to interpretation and connection and that these changes had led to more significant affinities between sculpture ceramics, especially within the vessel form. Therefore, all work in this chapter discussed the relationship of people and the environment they call home or they live in. Daniel Miller (p.176) research demonstrated homes are a reflection of their owners, and most important are the material things that make up their everyday worlds. Perry’s imagery and Cragg and Woodrow collections of objects focus on the effect of the capitalism system. However, in all their works they discussed, they emphasized on memory, the building of a sense of self, and what it meant to be human.