UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Opening: Saturday 29 November, from 4pm
29 November 2025 / 11 January 2026
RACHAEL ROSE
Objects of Ornament and Utility
Lace handkerchief, 2025, stoneware, galze, underglaze, 25 x 25 x 5 cm approx
Objects of Ornament and Utility investagates the meeting point of beauty and function, referencing the Arts and craft movements and the ideas of William Morris, who believed object should be both purposeful and thoughtfully made. The exhibition also considers the home as a psychological landscape - a place where the complexities of the self are lived, stored and projected onto things we keep close.
At its centre is Surface Tension, a three-dimensional wallpaper installation in which mounted vessels and suspended handkerchiefs invoke the legacy of William Morris. This gesture situates the work within a decorative arts lineage while simultaneously unsettling its conventions. In dialogue with this installation are lace edged handkerchiefs and over sized chains, a suite of vessels distinguished by exaggerated handles articulates weight, utility, and domestic familiarity, yet deliberately exceeds functional expectation to assert sculptural presence. Together, these works sustain an inquiry into the relationship between form and function, holding the two in deliberate suspension and inviting reflection on how material objects oscillate between the utilitarian and the aesthetic.
Much of this thinking emerges from the role of the home as the nerve centre of the self. It is within domestic space that emotions are felt most fully. Grief, joy, frustration, comfort - each absorbed into the textures of everyday objects. The things we surround ourselves with become extensions of identity: chosen, arranged, collected, and charged with personal meaning. Each object becomes a small externalisation of the internal world.
This approach resonates with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, particularly his phenomenological account of intimate spaces - rooms, corners, and the smallest domestic details, as sites of emotional weight that shape inner life. The works presented here extend that lineage, offering a meditation on how ornament, utility, and the objects of the home disclose the complex interiors of human experience.