“Stories in my Shed, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, UCL, London, 2013

Garden Shed, Wallpaper, Collage and Soundtrack

This work was made for Sanctuary Part 2 and follows on from Sanctuary Part 1, Home, Away and the Common Ground, a project which took place in Kenya in 2011. I approached this work by thinking about the tension between the inside and outside of a ‘home’. The garden shed which is usually associated with home can also represent a place of retreat, activity or even a dwelling for some people.The shed in this work which had a previous life in a friend’s garden was reconstructed in the gallery. The outside of the shed was then wall papered with the same design wallpaper as in Silverbeach, Sanctuary Part 1. Having the wallpaper as an outer surfsce of a building aims to reflect something that is irregular and uncertain, feelings which may be experienced by those exiled from their place of origin. The inside of the shed reflects the interior of a home, lined with cardboard and collaged with Western magazines reflecting the incongruity of different worlds. However within this Sanctuary can also be found in the songs of the songs of Ester Njoki, (Kenyan singer songwriter) played inside the shed.”