So recently I have been thinking a lot about the idea of 'Home' What do we mean by the place we call home? Somewhere we spend most of our time? Simply the place we sleep? Somewhere we own? I'm going through that phase in my life where I have a couple of places I call home - about 200 miles apart from each other. For me, a big part of my identity some from where I was brought up; having had a pretty stable and secure upbringing may well give me a different view of where I call home to someone in less fortunate circumstances. Immediately I was struck by a piece of work done by a very good friend of mine, Lennie Gotterson, for her foundation degree. It looks in intense detail at the area she was brought up - in amongst rows and rows of terraced houses which, on first impressions, look extremely similar. However, she has used an ink line drawing to highlight the small differences between each house.
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| © Erlina Gotterson |
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| © Erlina Gotterson |
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| © Erlina Gotterson |
For me, this work reminds me of how, when you have lived in a place for a certain amount of time, and when you walk past the same houses every day, you get to know them by memory, even when the differences are very small. In my opinion, that's when you can call a house your home, when your life returns to normality after having moved there, when you become used to your surroundings. However, by this logic, if you sleep in a place for long enough, can anywhere be called a home? A hotel? A doorway? A tent? Someone else's home? Definitely something to think about...
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