A Day at Home is a new photographic series by Charlotte Colbert. With playful nods to Bourgeois’ “femme-maison”, the visuals of ruins and fairy tales, Colbert questions the daily insanity of being human, more specifically within the context of the home. Shot on location, in a derelict house in Bethnal Green, the ruins become a character in themselves, the murky mindscape from which one cannot escape. The series will be on display at Gazelli Art House, a commercial art organisation dedicated to providing a new setting for the creation of contemporary art, from 29th November – 12th December 2013. Gazelli Art House is located at 39 Dover St, London.

Gazelli Art House Press Release

A DAY AT HOME

New series by Charlotte COLBERT
Show: 29th November – 12th December 2013
39 Dover St, London W1S 4NN, UK

A DAY AT HOME, the new photographic series by Charlotte Colbert, playfully explores the relationship between the imagined and the real within the context of the home. She loosely parallels the writer and the housewife as figures struggling to distinguish between the two. Their identities dissolving within the huis-clos of their setting and imaginings. The black and white images, shot on medium format film and shown within the context of their original negative, are like surreal fragments of a dream or nightmare. Using long and double exposures as well as props and distorting mirrors, her camera becomes a portal into the mind of a fictional character.

With playful nods to Bourgeois’ “femme-maison”, the visuals of ruins and fairy tales, Colbert questions the daily insanity of being human, more specifically within the context of the home. Shot on location, in a derelict house in Bethnal Green, the ruins become a character in themselves, the murky mindscape from which one cannot escape.

Drawing from her screenwriting, Colbert’s photographic work is strongly anchored within the language of film and story-telling. Her pictures originally conceived as a series, a sequence developed in script format before being shot. A Day At Home builds on the story-telling language of her work. A very personal exploration of the relationship between the writer and the home, the real and the imagined, identity and the self. A study of madness, the fragility of our sense of existence, reality and belonging. The writer and housewife coming together in their sense of isolation, solitude and confinement within a space which both closes in on them but also opens up into an epic landscape of surreal imaginings. Here, the use of medium format film allows for the character to be overwhelmed, defined and even disappear in her surroundings. Only a couple of images are shot in 35mm, the ones exploring the relationship and the mystery of self-perception, the woman’s body rendered grotesque as the viewer is placed between the character and her reflection.

“A truly original visual storyteller her images are hauntingly evocative” Laura Bailey, Vogue

“Some photographers take pictures and others make them. Charlotte is most definitely in the second category, her pictures a gateway into… her search for meaning and her very special way of seeing” Dorothy Bohm, photographer and co-founder Photographers’ Gallery in London

“Sometimes it feels like the thread linking us to the world is so frail that at any time it could break leaving us at the mercy of all our repressed confusion loss and fear” Charlotte Colbert

“When I see the pictures I feel the woman is probably sitting in her clean and comfortable living room. The decay around her is existing solely in her head” Mila Askarova. Director Gazelli Art House

Charlotte Colbert’s work will also feature in the British Heart Foundation’s Tunnel of Love auction in November 2013. Her work Lips Study will be sold for the charity alongside other lots including prints by Damien Hirst and Sir Peter Blake as well as Cartier jewellery and clothes by fashion house Mulberry.

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