Category: Blog posts

Seeing is believing?

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

With all of the discussion about clean energy transitions, it can feel very abstract for most people. Massive power plants, huge wind turbines.

Talk about the energy transition seems like it would feel more tangible and real to people if they are actually part of it. Every day you’d be likely to see your panels, or those of your neighbours. The talk of a transition would feel like something you were a part of. It would feel true and real and you’d be able to see how your life was better as a result.

Public acceptance of solar across the board seems to be high. The recent ‘Britain talks climate and nature’ report by Climate Outreach found only 11% of people don’t like seeing solar on roofs. That’s a huge level of public acceptance of a measure which can make quite a difference to the aesthetics of a home or street. People are also much more likely to get solar if their neighbours have got it, creating a potentially virtuous circle in terms of acceptance and take-up.

Solar installs are much quicker than lots of other measures, and less disruptive too. In terms of integrating solar into day to day life, there aren’t really any adjustments needed once it has been installed. Unlike with heat pumps which require space to be found for them and then they are using that space on an ongoing basis.

Immediately people get a benefit in terms of the energy being generated but there’s no lifestyle changes needed to be able to use it. There are lifestyle changes you might be incentivised to make as a result of having them – switching some activities to during the day, like using the dishwasher or washing machine – but if you don’t you are the one who might lose out.

With other energy efficiency or low carbon measures, there might be adjustments which are needed to make sure it works properly. There are also potential risks from an energy and climate perspective of the rebound effect. For those who have been under-heating their home that can actively be a good thing in terms of moving to a level of comfort which is better for health and wellbeing.

Directly providing measures which improve homes could also go some way to addressing the phenomenon Chen et al, (2025) identified, where the messaging on affordability doesn’t resonate with those on low incomes. This is something that people within the environmental sector can focus on around the benefits of some measures or the approach to decarbonisation more generally. So it’s humbling but helpful to get some insights into why that message can actually alienate many of the people it’s specifically trying to help. That messaging makes people feel nervous thinking about the costs because they don’t feel they can afford it. This is exacerbated by the fact they don’t think they will benefit from any transition so the costs are for them but not the benefits.

Being able to tangibly show people it’s for them can change that. With some things, like insulation, the measures themselves just aren’t visible to people unless they’ve been badly installed and then it becomes apparent through the mould, damp and other structural issues. Otherwise the impacts of the insulation can easily become invisible. People tend to take the savings from the energy efficiency and use it to fund an increased level of comfort – which can be the intention in fuel poverty schemes – or the savings get lost as prices rise anyway. So people feel frustrated because they were expecting a reduction in costs and instead see an increase.

In the medium term increasing the deployment of solar will also make it easier to shift costs from electricity to gas because people are less reliant on gas. Making that change is something that needs to happen to support the electrification of energy. Given most people are currently reliant on gas for their heating and hot water, there is an understandable concern about the impact of that shift on people’s health and incomes. Reducing the cost to people of electricity through the provision of free solar can then create the space to fairly and progressively make changes to costs.

Finding a way to give people a more tangible sense of ownership of the move to a decarbonised future feels utterly fundamental to getting people on board. Solar could be one way to do that, to allow people to see themselves as part of, and benefiting from that change.

Half-price posters at the Union

Posted in Blog posts, PhD diaryTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Every discipline or work area has it’s own activities and customs. Things which seem normal and are understood to those who are part of that world, that create a sense of belonging and give a shared vocabulary.

Moving into academia means I’m constantly discovering new ways of working or things which are part of this world that were previously unknown to me. There are plenty of situations where that sense of not knowing can feel stressful and hard, luckily so far it just feels novel and a sign of how different the world is that I’m discovering these things.

At a recent conference, during the break, one of the Professors said he was going to see the posters and invited me to go with him to have a look.

My immediate thought was that there was a half price poster sale at the Union and we were going to see. Which seemed incongruous but why not, they can be very good value.

Turns out we were going to see posters made by the people presenting at the conference, displayed as a kind of exhibition. Posters are ‘a thing’ it transpires in academia. The act and art of making a poster is a way to convey a lot of information about the project to people. It needs to be concise – both verbally and visually for people to be able to easily navigate into the project.

There can be competitions at those kind of events as to who has the best poster. So the poster itself becomes something that people try to do well, beyond and alongside the communication about the project.

I had various chats with people who are more in this world about posters, and they talked about the challenges of putting together a poster. From the difficulties of being able to find a good printer to be able to print off an A1 poster, to the need to have one on hand so that if an event appears at short notice then you’ve got a poster ready to go. I went to put need in that previous sentence into quotes, and even doing that I realised how I’m not yet in that realm – for those who are more embedded it’s as much of a need as lots of other things might seem to be for me.

Navigating through a world that feels very different to ones you’ve known before is an amazing opportunity, and I constantly feel like Alice through the looking glass. In this situation it was an easy and fun one to discover. It struck me both how improbable the transition is, with this serving as another point of difference to my previous work, whilst also reminding me how hard it can be to explore Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns.

Separated by a common language

Posted in Blog posts, PhD diaryTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In making the shift from policy and delivery to academia, I definitely wanted, want, to try and share the learning as I go. Keep the connections up with those I worked with in what now feels like a whole other lifetime. Make sure the work that I’m doing is useful and can help to increase the considered and urgently needed action. Share the fascinating research that lots of colleagues in the sector would be interested in, find useful and are probably unaware of. Helping to find ways to avoid the groups from talking about the same things in different ways and often not to or with each other.

I’ve asked around around for ideas on how I can share the learning as I go – glazed expressions on all sides when I say this.

Policy and delivery people don’t seem to have any frame of reference for this concept. Which I can’t be surprised by. I’m unable to think of many examples from my own experience in policy and delivery to draw upon. A previous organisation I was at explored doing an Area of Research Interest in the subject I was working on but the decision was taken not to proceed. Given we had found it hard to identify something suitable that both needed to be done and could justify time, yet could wait at least 6 months until it was done, it was hard to argue with that. Academic work can feel too abstract, too wrapped up in complicated, impenetrable language for many people in policy or delivery roles to engage with

On the academia side of things, when I asked one of the Professor’s at my Uni about external activities, networks and dissemination he said it was the first time he had been asked that by any student. That said, there is some work going on trying to bridge the gap and I’m keen to get in amongst it where it is possible and seems to make sense to do so.

There’s still plenty of disconnects though. So much great research I’ve seen, which I’m obviously not going to name, is seemingly aimed at policy makers. Referencing policy implications either directly in the title of the piece or within the framing of the article. Yet it’s really hard to see what the recommendations are, beyond the classic more research is needed. Setting aside the fact that lots of articles include or present content in ways which don’t seem aimed at policy makers, I’m only scratching the surface of the work that’s been done and yet there are very few pieces I’ve read which make it clear what they think the policy implications are of the work. Of course there are lots of reasons why that might be the case, from a reluctance of academics to be seen to be political or proscriptive, to not feeling comfortable asserting something unless it’s clearly evidenced. Yet policy makers have to take action and make decisions, even when they are dealing with imperfect information.

I’ve not yet found a clear template for how I can share as I go, how I can help to bridge the gap. So it’s a question of exploring and seeing, trying and connecting up with others. Looking at where and how I can start to make that intention true. What existing things are a good fit and where I can helpfully add to those or where I can make my own. Let’s see…

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Part of being able to make a good argument is holding on to the core of something that is true and being able to represent it in language that means something to the other person. Being prepared to go to where they are, to try and reach them and bring them with you. It’s not about you and your ego and what you need to say – you can get anything done if you don’t mind who takes the credit. The end justifies the means.

Conceptualising things in terms of the cost and value is a way of making things analogous, or at least finding some way to consider very different things. A way to meet and discuss things with people who might not share the same emotional attachment. To be able to make choices.

What if the means make it harder to get the ends though?

In trying to make the case for environmental action, we’ve spoken in the language of economics. The hard crunchy things that people care about, or at least can use to reach decisions. The factors that respond to the boxes and templates on the various applications, briefings, funding requests that are the ways of getting things done in lots of organisations, lots of parts of society.

Nature has a value of this. Without bees we’d be c.£120bn worse off per year. Energy inefficient rental homes cost the NHS at least £145m a year.

Framing things this way also helps to create a veneer of normality for trade-offs which would otherwise seem monstrous or unacceptable. It also helps to reinforce the frames and parameters – a tacit agreement that this is the ‘right way’ to look at things, to make choices, weigh up options. A shared language for things, or more perhaps, a seemingly shared language but really it belies some big differences in priorities, values, how to weigh things up.

This distancing from the emotional then maybe creates some stress – knowing that there’s a disconnect, putting your faith in something you don’t entirely trust, not feeling like you’ve got much control or agency. Feeling a bit shabby and tawdry, like you’re selling out, or being dishonest because the framing feels stifling, hiding the things that matter.

More importantly though, this framing hasn’t catalysed sufficient action.

Environmentalists, and indeed people working on other issues such as civil liberties or health for instance, have done the things we’re supposed to do. Spending precious time coming up with assessment methodologies to put a ‘value’ on a tree or landscape, or work out how much someone’s bad housing has ‘cost’ the NHS. Then watching as the things we care about get traded off against other things – often things which will make what we care about worse such as new roads or runways.

In lots of ways that’s fine. As I wrote in ‘Picking your poison’ – making decisions is about making trade-offs, accepting that you can’t necessarily have it all and therefore you have to choose. Losing an argument isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes your ideas or proposals aren’t right, could be better, have areas of weakness which need to be reviewed and reassessed. It can create a space to build better connections with other subjects, organisations or coalitions of the willing.

Sometimes though, losing the argument, and then keeping on losing, just makes it more urgent to win sometimes. From climate and biodiversity perspectives, the longer it takes to ‘win’ the argument, the more worrying things become in terms of impacts. Therefore the more action needs to be taken to try and respond, which is then less appealing to more people. So we go round that loop again and again.

In a different time and in relation to a different context, Gramsci said ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ There are currently plenty of ‘morbid symptoms’ in the UK and internationally – on migration, health, civil liberties and, well the list is a very long one. The sense ‘That’s your bloody GDP not ours’ seems to still be true for many. It feels like the lack of space for care is part of what has created these symptoms. That people are protesting about the effects and looking around for politicians, proposals and stories that offer something different.

Feeling optimistic at this point can by turns feel naïve and necessary. Yet I love the quote from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the dark’, where she takes the idea of hope as something passive and turns it into something more active. She says ‘“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.’

It feels like the current situation creates the space and need to shift from the stories we’ve been telling about the financial value of things, and gives more urgency to telling different stories. Ones which resonate better with people – both those who hear the stories and also, for many who are telling them. Most of us can’t do something directly about the stories politicians tell, even those we would expect to be doing better. Trying to find ways in our days and actions to tell better stories ourselves and to try and make the case to care is something we can and must do though.

Picking your poison

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

In the discussion between fabric first and fabric fifth it can often feel as though people are trying to get to the ‘right answer’ rather than looking at where the inefficiencies are, how big they are and trying to decide which is more feasible.

In choosing fabric fifth it means that there will be a need to generate more energy and increase grid resilience. All of this costs and means building more national infrastructure. It’s not the more efficient approach in lots of ways, as it means putting more energy generation in than might be optimally required. Asking people to decarbonise their heat supply is a much simpler message and one which can have the biggest impact on their individual carbon footprint. There can still be a place for other measures too, particularly if people want to fund them themselves, but if it’s hard to persuade people to take up any environmental measures, focusing on the most impactful could bring efficiencies that way. In addition to generating carbon savings more quickly, it could also help to reduce costs in trying to recruit people by using a simpler message, and cutting the costs of assessing homes as the standalone heat pump installation can be simpler than internal or external wall insulation.

With fabric first, there should be less energy needing to be generated. In practice this isn’t straightforward, with lots of evidence suggesting there’s a performance gap arising from quality issues in the install process and then a rebound effect, with many households taking improved energy efficiency as comfort savings. This can lead to an increase in energy consumption – and for those households who are under-heating their homes, with the knock-on impacts on the health of the people and the building itself affected, this can be a good thing on wellbeing grounds.

To get to those carbon savings also means trying to persuade people to take up the deeper levels of insulation it requires. This can be more invasive, with most of the ‘easy’ to treat measures done – such as loft or cavity wall insulation. There are still some remaining but these are more likely to be complicated works such as non-standard cavity walls, or perhaps they are lofts where the amount of things being stored makes it too difficult for the occupants to contemplate the work. The longer it takes to persuade people, the more carbon gets emitted along the way.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the shape of the decarbonisation curve, what that means in terms of the quantum of carbon which gets emitted and crucially what that means in terms of how the shift feels to live through. Reaching net zero by any date by plateauing in a steady state way and then plummeting to zero, or a more gradual downward trajectory both get to the same point. Imagining the shape of those two separate trajectories, and therefore the space underneath them as a proxy for the carbon emissions, shows the amount of carbon generated is much bigger in the first scenario than the second. The first scenario increases the likelihood of feedback loops, which mean the impacts could be more significant. Thinking about the transitions and how they would feel to live through, goes to some quite different places. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, what felt like a total transformation in how we lived globally led to a c.4-5% drop in carbon emissions in 2020. It’s hard to imagine a precipitous drop which is good for humanity. Whereas the more gradual drop suggests a more managed approach which seems likely to be much easier to live through.

If we lived in a world where everything was aligned to the fabric first approach – funding, regulation, owner and occupants willingness and interest and the supply chain capacity and capability – it could still be the best option. Effective and efficient. If that isn’t where we are, which it isn’t, then the question becomes one of trade-offs. To make decisions means choosing the trade-offs rather than acting as though they aren’t there and continuing to push specific approaches.

Are there more questions than answers?

Posted in Blog postsTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Asking questions can be really hard. Figuring out what you want to know. Narrowing down the question means clarifying in your own mind what you are trying to understand.

Working out what you need to find out from the other person and therefore how to frame the question – both to get the information you want and also to convey certain emotions. The questions we ask can vary depending upon whether we want to be argumentative or conciliatory. Asking something that we know will bust their balls or goes into territory that’s difficult or a source of previous arguments, and likely to create another argument. Or choosing another question, another way of framing things to take a different route, elicit or create some other answers.

That all means that asking questions means choosing. In asking one question, things go down one line of thinking and opens up some areas whilst potentially also closing off others. Sometimes those questions have a short-term impact – what shall we have for dinner? Would you like to watch this film or that one? For others questions can determine a much longer-term direction something goes in. As I narrow down the focus of my PhD at the moment, that means choosing which things I let go of exploring more deeply and which things take up my days and weeks and life. A dizzying array of forks in the road, and maybe they won’t make that much of a difference overall but that sense of the power of the question to shape things feels palpable. Sometimes a delicious, exciting thing and sometimes sad at having to let go of some aspects to have something that feels manageable and coherent.

Which gives a real sense of how questions can shape or open up possibilities, the freedom asking questions brings. Would you like this? Can you do that? Questions can take you into different worlds – would you like this job, to go on a date with me, put it all on red or black? The answer only exists because first there was a question.

And that life changing potential is true if you’re the one asking the question too – something which had seemed implausible or impossible crystallises in your head or heart around a question. It might be a question to yourself – can I do this? Should I do this? What do I want? Can I bear this? How can I make things better? But when you’re feeling stuck it can feel like there aren’t any questions – because questions mean choices and being stuck can feel like you don’t have any choices. That’s not to say that asking a question can lead to an answer, or not immediately at least. Sometimes the question is just a wondering about what to do and then it can feel unclear. It opens the door to possibilities though…

That then suggests there isn’t a set number of answers. Or answers which are ready and waiting to be found. They aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered, the right question acting as a code breaker to crack open a chest to get the answers within. Lots of things become answers because first there were questions.

Reading Maller & Horne’s (2011) piece ‘Living lightly: How does Climate Change Feature in Residential Home Improvements and What are the Implications for Policy?‘ I was struck really forcefully with that sense of how we can spend a long time asking the same questions, and how that can potentially shape so much. Eventually we might get part of an answer, but maybe that can take too long and asking a different, seemingly harder question might have been better.

Part of their research was trying to understand people’s views about the environment and how important an issue it is to them, as well as finding out what environmental activities they undertake. The people involved agreed that it was a really important issue. When asked what activities they undertake they were all able to offer examples. These examples were in the realms of recycling, turning off appliances and light switches; monitoring their bills; food growing and similar. The writers suggested this showed that behaviour change campaigns had worked because those activities were all ones which people had been asked to do through campaigns over years.

So the questions that had been asked of whether people could recycle or switch lights off, had been somewhat answered in the affirmative. Yes, that is something that people can do, they can absorb those things into what Shove describes as their day to day practice. Maybe imperfectly but still, people can associate themselves with that activity and do it enough to feel like it’s true to answer that these are things they do.

Turning to home improvements people were talking about making though, those environmental views and actions didn’t translate for the most part. They lived in a separate compartment and there wasn’t really much of a shift. Some were thinking about solar or water tanks – measures in Australia, where the research was undertaken that had been increasingly discussed. In the things that could really make a difference people weren’t motivated, couldn’t see the connection, or disconnection, to their other views on environmental matters.

Perhaps asking a different question of people – can you retrofit your homes rather than can you reuse a plastic bag, wouldn’t have generated a different answer. We’ve spent decades asking smaller questions, getting imperfect answers on those, for instance in relation to recycling. We haven’t seen those answers translate into more positive responses on actions that would have a bigger impact – such as whether people would improve their homes or not. Could a long time trying to get imperfect answers to bigger questions be more impactful than a long time asking smaller questions?

Shifting in real time

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

I was astonished to read that this summer in the UK has been the hottest on record, not because I doubt the data but because my own memory of it feels so out of kilter. I’ve lived through it and it felt toasty at times but others have felt hotter. Perhaps the summers of 2020 and 2021 felt hotter. The lockdowns and pandemic situation might have made those feel hotter – everything felt more claustrophobic and turned up a level then. Even more so during 2020, when neighbours were carrying out an incredibly loud, judderingly bone-shaking extension. The noise and vibrations felt so intense, they created a feedback loop between the discomfort and the heat.

A big part of why it felt different to me is also probably because I’ve been lucky enough to move since then. During those pandemic times I was living in an Edwardian, first floor, purpose-built maisonette – a building designed for quite another climate. Now I live in a house that, whilst not very easy to keep cool, is nonetheless much easier to do so. Particularly at night, which meant I’ve been able to get some respite from the heat rather than feeling like my eyeballs were going to burst. I’m also in an area that’s more surrounded by trees, so that’s potentially giving more of a cooling feel too. I can come up with these different ideas to rationalise my thinking, even as I wonder if it’s just me trying to explain being in a more privileged situation.

Still though. The recency bias of a few autumnal feeling days and lots of rain means that those glorious sunny days feel a long time ago. Even scrolling back through photos, I see lots of sunny days but also plenty of grey days with occasional drizzle in the mix too. Knowing that I’m looking back at a summer which is record breaking and struggling to assimilate that information with what I remember and see. To see the shifting baselines happening, in real time, to myself, someone who works on climate issues and is aware of this in a way others might not be, feels disconcerting. If I can’t even persuade myself, how can I be surprised that others aren’t alarmed?

In a New York minute…

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Looking at the weather report last night for today, it said there would be rain, lots of rain, a bit later on in the day. Not just a bit of rain but some good double blob levels of rain.

I woke up this morning to bright blue skies. Not a cloud to be seen in the sky. The soft, warm light gradually growing in its seemingly implacable intensity. As the early morning turned into kind of time that no longer feels like a secret pocket of time to be awake in, a virtuous bonus for the owls amongst us, but the kind of time most might be awake – the big blue sun filled sky carried on.

Checked the weather report again. Surely it wasn’t still predicting rain. Out of this most gently insistent blue sky – it seemed impossible.

Gradually some clouds appeared, then a few more came with tints of grey.

The seemingly impossible happened. Double blob rain out of a darkened sky. No blue to be seen. Replaced with thoughts of putting on a light and getting a jumper.

It is easy to forget everything is changing all of the time. Easy to feel moments are bigger and more substantial than they are. Good and sometimes astonishing to be reminded otherwise, fortunate that reminder comes today in the form of some much needed rain…

On not knowing…

Posted in Blog posts, PerspectivesTagged , , , Leave a comment

It’s a weird space to be in, to not know things but be trying to know and explore. To bump up against the edges of not knowing. To not know how to know. To allow yourself to be bored and uncomfortable. To go down some rabbit holes without knowing if they are rabbit holes or the thing that will unlock the knowing…

It’s rare to be in a space where it’s okay to not know. To be able to admit that – because it feels possible, permissible and safe to do so.

I was reminded again of this whilst reading the rightly furious and urgent piece by Rachel Donald – ‘The crisis of imagination’. It’s easy to think we have such a rich understanding of the world – from ever more detailed research, footage from space and down deep into the earth’s core and back in time which shows us our world in so many different ways. Yet public discourse, in politics and online, often isn’t kind to those who admit they don’t have all the answers.

Making ways to allow ourselves, individually and collectively to not know – and not to stop there but be open to finding out – is key. To be prepared to face some mild discomfort in admitting our ignorance, so we can better focus on what needs to be done.

Walked the homes

Posted in Blog posts, Field notesTagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Do Ho Suh’s exhibition at the Tate is so titled because traditional Korean buildings known as a hanok can be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere, a process of ‘walking the house’.

It was wonderful to be immersed in someone expressing different aspects of the home. From the physical aspects to the emotional and temporal. Seeing them all overlaid together, as they are for people most of the time but which feels rare to see in artworks. Homes can often be featured in art but rarely as the main event, more commonly as a backdrop or fleeting glimpse. Something that tells us about someone but isn’t usually the main focus of the piece.

Public/private split

Homes are usually thought of as private spaces, or at least they have increasingly been for the last few hundred years. People lived together in much more communal set-ups. Sharing rooms, beds and homes. Things that we would now consider private, like using the toilet or having sex, were much more public activities then. It’s apparently why swear words were related to religion up until a few hundred years ago – that was a transgressive thing to talk about, whereas swear words now are more about sex and toilet things because they have become private matters, things to be ashamed or embarrassed about.

Here, Suh upends that, making the private public. He has houses within houses, parts of homes which have become public spaces as they are demolished. A childhood home rubbed down and rebuilt within the gallery. Every part of the exterior traced onto paper, lines and designs, to capture the look and feel of the place. Films showing homes exposed to the public as they are demolished, private walls becoming briefly public before they disappear.

Homes in this telling are not just becoming public because we get to see the private light switches and fire hydrants of previous homes but, in sharing his artistic response to his home, he’s also helping us move from the specific to the universal. In showing us where he’s lived in a way which invites us in, creates some intimacy, he’s also inviting people to think about their own home. Helping us bring our own homes into that gallery, comparing ours with his, reflecting back on our own, seeing how others live.

Gender and homes

Homes have traditionally become a place that’s associated with women rather than men, as many, including Bowlby, Gregory and McKie have reflected. Following the split between public and private spaces, men became more associated with public spaces and women with private spaces. Perhaps if the exhibition had been by a woman rather than a man, it might have resonated slightly differently. A sense of women working within the parameters they are typically afforded. Whereas having a man make art from it, and see it as something which is worthy of making art with and from, is another way of helping to show and shift that division.

Modernity and homes

Putnam identified two successive transformations of contemporary living from traditional 19th Century models of home. The first was the emergence of the modern home between about 1920-1950 when domestic spaces were designed around the technical core of sewers, water, gas and power cables. A time when these innovations were new for most people and somewhat astonishing, or perhaps a little terrifying too. The second shift he identifies is around the 1960s, when the technical, economic and political structures of modernity became part of the background of modern home life. At that point, as what he describes as ‘the material life supports of modernity are taken for granted’, the cables and sewers and suchlike fade into the background and the home becomes a space in which people personalise their space and negotiate with each other about how it looks.

In that context it was fun to see cables, wires and light fittings represented. Those life supports, especially things like cables, don’t tend to be shown and have disappeared into a sense of what normal homes look like. Often in lifestyle magazines cables and wires get edited out of pictures, as though the items they are powering magically work without showing the plugs. That it’s not cool or aspirational to need to connect in to power sockets.

Suh shows the different aspects of the home which would normally be hidden, peeling away layers of life. Simultaneously showing the modernity of the home which is taken for granted by those who have grown up with it, and also going back to the pre-modern home where it’s not taken for granted and is instead something to marvel at. Bringing them to the fore again allows for the magic and importance of them to be seen and recognised.

Making homes our own

When people move into a place they often try and remove traces of previous occupants to ‘make it their own’. Suh shows there are many ways to make a home our own.  He had to get permission from some of the landlords to make the art,  a way of taking ownership of the home – it’s his art when it’s out in the world, even if it wasn’t and isn’t ‘his’ home.

In one of the pieces, he layers up aspects of different homes – light switches and plugs, light fittings and door handles. It gave me a time-travelling sense of all of the people who would have used those light switches and door handles. The different hands that had used them, the lives they have supported. As we become more separate in our homes, with much less communal living, more people living by themselves, and even within homes as we have separate spaces, overlaying parts from multiple homes gave a more communal sense of home.

Memory and meaning

For some, home is a place of practices and habits, for others it’s a place that holds memory and meaning. The pieces by Suh blur those boundaries. The practice of making art, the holding on to places and details which act as anchors for both practices within the home and also memories.

The pieces are a way of preserving the past but also, for him as an artist, of making the future – exhibitions and work, building a body of work and meaning. Tracing the contours of the building, with his childhood home literally rubbing every part of the outside of the building, capturing the details on fabric which then gets remade into a simulacrum of his home – but not a place you could actually live within. A memory of the memory. A memory that looks like the memory, in the same way a story that gets told and retold can become a memory of the story, rather than a memory of the memory.

As Brickell reflects, home isn’t just a place where history ends up but where history emerges from and, quoting Caluya, the home exhibits ‘a certain plastic tendency that enables its boundaries to expand and shrink’. This work does that too, delicately and painstakingly tracing the boundaries of the homes but with an intention for those very boundaries to go further out into the world.

The exhibition space itself felt like things were quite crushed together and could have done with some more space to breathe. Nonetheless, providing room for people to see homes as worthy of being considered art, and not just glamorous homes but the life support parts, created a space for thinking about homes that we can take from the gallery into the world and back home again.