How we make home – The Forever Temporary

What does it mean to move all the time? My temporary history was triggered to ask myself this question after visiting The Forever Temporary at The Whitgift Centre in Croydon which forces us to reflect on this.

The exhibition centres on property guardianships which refers to tenants who have a responsibility to maintain properties, with little tenant rights. These can be anything from schools and warehouses to offices and churches and they may be asked to leave anytime – and usually they are. This exhibition encourages us to think about life after eviction. I think of many of the buildings I’ve lived in that have been demolished, refurbished or are still standing without me. They act as a reminder of many past lives.

I know keenly that stability, or the feeling of being stable in a house is rare. It’s often a myth to think that we will one day be in a position where we live somewhere we’re not asked to leave. (Even for many homeowners, which is seen as the final boss of ownership, we know that the bank owns your house and can repossess and turf you out at any time). We might be in Croydon but we could be anywhere in the country.

The way in which we make home is the centre of this exhibition and it reminds us of how people do that everyday. Lucia Scarselletta takes the feeling of being in a changing city as she travels the Farringdon to Croydon route on the train and tells us she’s just a passenger to all this change. We’re left wondering what the view will look like in the future and of course, none of us know.

How people make home in places not designed to be lived in reveals a specific kind of magic. Lucia transforms the language of danger symbols of her everyday – it’s a reminder that there has been human craft used to communicate something to us – and her work cross hatching furiously puts a human back at the forefront as a radical act of defiance.

My favourite piece is an unfurled sheet of white scaffold textile is a visual of ‘refurbishment’ which Lucia turns it on its head, lifting it with beautiful silk stitching that says things she’s seen, like ‘1100 pcm’, ‘Flat to rent 20sqm west Croydon’ or ‘if you are interested let me know on whatsapp’.

This developer language has been such a part of our lives that we don’t even notice it anymore. This way, our cities, countries change before our eyes before we have time to stop it. How then, do we begin to build resistance?

These artists tell us that the first step, perhaps, is to look at the country we’re living in. Nicolaas van de Lande was a property guardian in a school and his work, which uses flocking on a large-scale square formation in oranges, reds, blues and greens, is both texturally interesting and full of rich colour that makes you want to touch it – traces of what was once lived as. In this way, he encourages us to think of the lifespan of a building, and ourselves.

The whole space is an artwork about moving and there are details to help remind us – the foldable concertina cardboard seating acts as a reminder that you might have to pick up and go at any moment, while the area for us to feel flocking is a moment of calm, for you to satisfy your inner child while you make grown up decisions.

Both artists make me think of how we build home, (Lucia encourages us to look at what surrounds us and what we get used to while Nicolaas makes us reflect on histories of a building) finding beauty in symbols, and rejecting the idea that any space was not designed for them. They ask the question, how do you fix that? How do you let people in? It’s something for us all to think about.

They also make us think about constant moving and what is lost and gained in that process. Crucially, the exhibition tells us what people who’ve had a life of moving already know: by shining shimmering, beautiful light on shadowy corners, we’re reminded that we leave something thoughtful, beautiful and sometimes magical, behind.