In Home Entertainment a woman plays alone at home.  Drawing on memories from her childhood she imagines the games she used to play, recreating scenes using household objects and furniture.  She transforms her domestic arena into an imaginary world, spinning back and forth between reality and memory.  The kitchen table becomes a boat in which she blissfully rows away on the terracotta sea substituting brooms for oars.  An upturned saucepan stands in for a car transporting its driver to fanciful lands.

Clothed in bizarre costumes; a bikini made from dusters, a mermaid tail stitched from non-scratch silver scourers, a swimsuit knitted from J-cloth; she is rowing, driving, galloping, diving and sliding down the banisters.  She is blowing bubbles through a potato masher and standing guard with a mop.  Momentarily isolated from the real world this domestic charade offers solace from societal expectations.

Kim Thornton humorously combines making and photography to explore female stereotypes and domesticity.  In Home Entertainment a series of tableaux vivants bridge the distance between childhood memory and the reality of everyday life. These conceptual portraits re-enact childhood memories and the unexpected scenes subvert everyday tasks, suggesting a secret life of make-believe and fantasy.

Join us on Thursday 24 May, 6-8pm, for the opening of the exhibition.

Film screening: Sugar In My Bowl
Monday 25 June, 7pm
A screening of art film Sugar In My Bowl, followed by Kim Thornton in conversation with Kim Shaw, photographer and Executive Director at Photofusion, London’s largest independent photography resource centre.
Sugar in my Bowl parodies popular television cookery demonstrations.  A woman is engaged in the homely task of making cupcakes with a surprising outcome.  Wearing an apron made from cupcake cases she stirs and ices the cakes to the soundtrack of a childhood creative programme Vision On whose presenter Tony Hart would paint using kitchen utensils as his brushes.
Free – please click here to book your place.

Home Entertainment is supported by Arts Council England.