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Home Ground Advantage

The significance of ‘home’ is universally understood, yet in a contemporary world of change and displacement the idea of home is constantly being redefined and remade. As social, cultural and political paradigms shift at a faster rate than ever before, art and curatorial projects play an important role in capturing the idea of home in transition. This paper examines the capacity of projects that are set in home environments experiencing a state of flux—whether through agricultural decline, natural disaster or urban ‘gentrification’—to engage participants through the conceptual conduit of ‘home’. In The Idea of Home (2011), Geraldine Brooks cites dictionary definitions of home as ‘a place of origin, a native habitat’, an ‘environment offering security and happiness’, and ‘the place where something is discovered, founded, developed or promoted. A source.’ When attuned to an artist’s experience and understanding of home, a curator can create an intellectual space that activates viewers’ own memories and experiences, facilitating new understandings and meanings as a result of those connections. Furthermore, with the implementation of particular curatorial strategies, an art or exhibition project can become a forum for investigating dichotomous external and internal descriptors of place—home as seen from the outside and from the inside—teasing out connections not just between artworks, but between artworks and viewers, and between viewers and place. In order to achieve these conditions, curatorial practice must assume to have moved on from simply assembling artworks in chronological or thematic sequence to curate (create) the conditions for viewers’ engagement. Curators and artists must enable audiences to get beyond simply ‘understanding’ the meaning of the artwork to reach a point where they are ‘inhabiting’ (being at home within) the intellectual and sensory curatorial space. That space of engagement is affective, experiential and experimental. Looking internationally, over the last decade artists and curators have undertaken a range of projects that reframe the idea of home in the face of ever-diminishing public space and shifts in population demographics. The fourth edition of artist Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates project is one such work—it was commissioned for a site in Southwark, London, by Tate Modern as part of its Global Cities project in 2007, and further editions have since spread to many countries. The idea was to engage a local community to repurpose an unused area, enhancing people’s experience of, and thereby deepening a connection to, their home. A fruit, vegetable and herb garden