The New Domestic
‘The celebration of the everyday has oppositional and dissident overtones, offering a voice to the silenced and proposing possibilities for change… Contemporary art engaged with the everyday [in] the work of Surrealists, Situationists, the Fluxus group, and conceptual and feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s. This art shows a recognition of ordinary dignity or the accidentally miraculous, an engagement with a new kind of anthropology, an immersion in the pleasures of popular culture, or a meditation on what happens when nothing happens’ [1]
Artworks
The New Domestic is a response to how we live and work through life changing situations and global crisis. Concerned with the ‘aesthetics of daily life ’[2] it examines the impact of recent world and life events on our everyday routines and rituals. These new experiences and challenging circumstances are reflected in the images produced of the meaningful practices we commit to, are motivated by, enjoy or fulfil each day. The tasks we complete, structure, plan and order with energy and intention, whether domestic duties, obsessive and repetitive actions, drawing, making or mundane chores, are explored here. How we frame and balance our days, mentally preparing and motivating ourselves through routine, helps us achieve our goals and connect to a sense of purpose.
The New Domestic is the first in a series of online exhibitions organised by Roderick & Jones. This collection of limited edition digital prints and original drawings features artists, Keith Bayliss, Bella Kerr, Mez Kerr Jones and Anna Lewis.
[1] Johnstone, Stephen (ed;) The Everyday (London; MIT) 2008 https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/stephen-johnstone
[2] Yuriko, Saito ‘Aesthetics of the Everyday’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/aesthetics-of-everyday/>.
Artists
BELLA KERR
At Table (2020 Edition)
As a fine artist, drawing is a constant in my practice. Drawing is a way of thinking – visually and out loud. It is a process of travelling into the unknown – making new tracks, sometimes with the maps of previous drawings as a guide, sometimes into a place as yet unvisited.
At Table, was recently selected by the National Gallery Young Producers for inclusion in their Degazine (2020), a publication of works submitted in response to Degas’ painting ‘Helen Rouart in her father’s study’. This is a drawing about being a parent and being a child – because for much of life many of us are both, even years into adulthood. As with the Degas painting, the table is another character in the drawing and a surface that both divides and connects the figures. Whether playing or arguing, both figures are a little like animals, with the suggestion of a tail on each as, when we are playful or in disagreement we are freed of our polite human disguise.
I don’t know if the child is my younger self or my daughter’s, and whether the adult is my father or me. I am not an ‘emerging’ artist, but perhaps a ‘re-emerging’ one and now, as I step into another phase of life, a parent, but no longer someone’s child, I feel a little like my younger self, filled with a sense of freedom and possibility.
KEITH BAYLISS
MEZ KERR JONES
Blue Town: Retail (2020)
The Indigo Alliance is an assembly of towns, cities and islands, whose mutual identity centres around the colour Blue. Born out a shared ambition to transcend their national perspectives, and converse openly with other blue-minded places without the aid of centralised governments, through an international alliance of colour. Blue Town, situated on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, was the founding place of the Alliance. As a maritime port it historically welcomed sea-travellers, and exists as a place of flux and the exchange of ideas and culture. Blue Town’s High Street became the meeting place for radical discussion and the formation of the UK’s first workers co-operative society. The Indigo Alliance members work together through international correspondence, lead by the belief in a future based on unity and co-operation, whilst celebrating the individuality and identity of places. Their aim was to join something larger than the island; to forge alternative partnerships overseas and realise their commonalities, not based on geographical proximity but their shared Blueness.