The Artist at Home

Artists have worked from home for many reasons, including care duties, financial or political constraints, or availability and proximity to others.
From the 'home studios' of Charles and Ray Eames, to the different photographic representations of Robert Rauschenberg's studio, this book explores the home as a distinct site of artistic practice, and the traditions and developments of the home studio as concept and space throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.
Using examples from across Europe and the Anglophone world between the mid-20th century and the present, each chapter considers the different circumstances for working at home, the impact on the creative lives of the artists, their identities as artists and on the work itself, and how, sometimes, these were projected and promoted through photographs and the media. Key themes include the gendered and performative aspects of women practising 'at home', collaborative studio communities of the 1970s - 90s including the appropriation of abandoned spaces in East London, and the effects of Covid on artistic practices and family life within the spaces of 'home'. The book comprises full-length chapters by artists, architects, art and design historians, each of whom bring different perspectives to the issues, interwoven with short interviews with artists to enrich and broaden the debates. At a time when individual relationships to home environments have been radically altered, The Artist at Home considers why some artists in previous decades either needed to or chose to work from home, producing work of vitality and integrity. Tracing this long tradition into the present, the book will provide a deeper understanding of how the home studio has affected the practices and identity of artists working in different countries, and in different circumstances, from the mid-20th century to the present.

Imogen Racz is an art historian and former Associate Head of School for Research at Coventry University, UK. She is the author of British Art of the Long 1980s: Diverse Practices, Exhibitions and Infrastructures (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday (Bloomsbury, 2015).
Jill Journeaux is Professor of Fine Art at Coventry University, UK, and Director of Drawing Conversations. She has published on expanded drawing practices, including Body, Space and Place in Collective and Collaborative Drawing (2020) and Collective and Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice (2017).

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction, The Artist at Home, Imogen Racz (Independent Scholar, UK) and Jill Journeaux (Coventry University, UK)
Part One: The Studio at Home: Designing and Projecting the Creative Life
1. Blurring Boundaries between Life and Work: The Home Studios, Homes and Design/Film/ Multi-Media Workshop of Charles and Ray Eames, 1941 to 1978, Pat Kirkham (Kingston University, UK)
2. Interview, Liz Harrison and Imogen Racz
3. An Atomisation of the Home: Towards a Compound Dwelling Interior, Nicholas Thomas Lee (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark)
4. Interview, Paula Chambers and Imogen Racz
5. Interview, Zahrah Al Ghamdi and Imogen Racz
6. Robert Rauschenberg's Studio through the Lens of Two Photographers, Adi Meyerovitch (Yale University, USA)
7. Interview, Graham Chorlton and Jill Journeaux
Part Two: Women, Home, Studio
8. Working from Home: Portuguese women artists during Estado Novo, Maria Luisa Coelho (University of Oxford, UK)
9. Interview, Gerda Roper (Teesside University, UK) and Jill Journeaux
10. Making Memory Material: Clutter and the Home Studios of Margaret Olley and Mirka Mora, Cassandra Joore-Short (Melbourne University, Australia)
11. Interview, Carole Griffiths (Bradford College, UK) and Jill Journeaux
Part Three: Live-work Communities from the 1970s to the 1990s
12. Abandoned and Appropriated Homes: The live-work spaces of artists in East London, Imogen Racz (Independent Scholar, UK) and Heidi Saarinen (Coventry University, UK)
13. Mikey Cuddihy Reflections
14. Housewatch: Cinematic architecture for the Pedestrian, David Martin (Independent Scholar)
15. Interview, George Saxon and Jill Journeaux
Part Four: Staying Home During COVID-19
16. Sailing to my Nearest Neighbours for Lockdown Cocktails: Reflections on the Politics of Home and Homemaking during a Pandemic, Maria Photiou (University of Derby, UK) and Lia Lapithi (Independent artist)
17. Interview, Fran Cottell (Camberwell College of Arts, UK) and Imogen Racz
18. Artists at Home and Away: Mobile Bodies, Distance and Proximity, Gudrun Filipska (Arts Territory Exchange)
19. Interview, Angie Walton (Liverpool John Moores University, UK), Sarah Black-Frizell (Liverpool Hope University, UK) and Imogen Racz
20. Studio. Object. Home: Place Setting, Jill Journeaux (Coventry University, UK)
21. Interview, Sreejata Roy and Jill Journeaux
22. Interview, Anastasia Starikova and Jill Journeaux
Index