Backspace: The Mantelpiece exhibition text
The home is one thing – but the centre of a
home must be another. Rather than a synthesis of all the adjectives commonly ascribed
to the interior (solemn, sedative, unobserved), the fireplace and all that adorns
it, is uniquely active. Histocially, it
was tended to in great frequency; it was not enough to simply have a fireplace with
the expectation of it always being lit, more than it was a great privilege to
build and keep one. Especially when thinking of the cost of its labour, the
materials to maintain it, and the infrastructure needed to house it, they were
an open luxury, felt immediately by sight, smell, and touch. In living rooms of
the upper and middle classes, the mantelpiece and its adornments became a tableau
of life inside the interior, a sort of dramatization or stage for the family to
act their roles when inviting guests into this constructed heart of the home.
I think of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield
Park, and of Fanny Price who was refused fire in her bedroom by her rich
relations. Whose general meekness and strong moral integrity foiled certain
mannerisms Austen despised in the rich (of social grandeur taking precedence
over empathy and common sense). When fire[1]
was finally offered to her, Fanny was only granted its luxury when her poor social
standing was assumed a little higher, her worthiness more compelling. She had finally
appeared beautiful enough to deserve it, consequently when her pockets were
deemed deep enough to afford it. It is clear, that the fireplace whispers to you
its desire:
Work for your fire. Sweat and
flaunt yourself in front of it; exhibit what makes you worthy to keep it in
your midst or freeze and find warmth elsewhere.
Now it echoes in the cast iron fireplaces
of your Victorian share house in Glebe or Redfern, their baskets drenched thick
with white paint, rendering their function decorative (if only decorative meant
entirely without function). Stripped of
its utility, the only part that has remained unchanged is the mantelpiece – a shelf
of elevated display, once matching the social significance of the fire. With
adornment, the mantelpiece was an exhibition, of notable calling cards and the
central hearth clock, replaced now by prints from the 2021 Hilma af Klint exhibition
or curved wax candlesticks from Amazon. As votives to the now – votives from
desire, they are aspirational objects, they form the centre of a room even in
the absence of a fire, a phantom sense of its standing lingering, perhaps in trapped
smoke or indented in architecture.
Of course aspiration cannot exist without
anxiety, what discerns taste, subcultures/aesthetics, is just another form of
fear more tamed and understood. When home in an economic crisis is stripped of its
nuclear meaning, the gendered and heterosexual image of the interior has brief
moments of upset. Much like Sydney’s own housing/eviction riots during the Great
Depression, identity in the form of location, furniture, and work, have always
been fiercely protected – to have certain things stay firmly behind a fixed
door, disjointed from our own wandering physiques. It is not simply about
ownership, more than it is the splitting desire to preserve a half of ourselves
to fixed brick and plaster, a fight within us against the home – to shape steady
objects into niches for ourselves. Home is after all contested ground, less peaceful
than what we might imagine and yet unlike any other, it comforts an honesty
within ourselves, to reveal an identity most unique to us. This understanding swings
both ways, from the conventional to unconventional, and yet, in both it provides
an ease in its physical and historical constancy, who’s function now so well
used, has become universal.
Perhaps somewhere, I imagine – on the
mantelpiece of someone too afraid to speak, I’d find a certain bouquet of
lavender affixed to their display, and everything would be made perfectly
clear. Or to lie upon it myself and offer my form up for inspection, to make it
so like your trinkets or books I am perfectly read. To be in comfort with whoever
I choose (the rotations of my guests and lovers), in the home where a part of
me is always fought over, and then what winnings survive, are placed upon and protected
up on the mantel.
[1] “Fire” in our language is often used as a
noun, able to be gifted whole and complete, instead of noting its resources as
it’s object, shifting value on fire though itself only the byproduct of
chemical reactions.
Curated by Lukas Kalos. Backspace Galley. August 2023
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment