Room for Room

Room for Room emerged from a three-month artist residency led by McMillan (January – March 2012) working with a group of ten BA Fine Art students at Byam Shaw (Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts London) that drew on McMillan’s installation-based exhibition The Front Room as a stimulus. Students were asked to bring in an object that they could share a story about that reflected the material culture of their domestic space. Given the intimate and confidential nature of their stories it was important that they felt safe in the workshop, and trusted the creative process.

Their stories touched on a number of themes and issues related to memories of growing up; loss of home; family home and its legacy; living in suburbia and the city, and homelessness in the context of identity, diaspora and aspirations. Students used their individual stories to develop to create mixed-media installations, video art, durational time-based and performance-based pieces as part of group exhibition Room for Room in The Concourse Gallery at Byam Shaw, May 2012.

The students in the show included: Jessie Churchill, Jennifer Farrow, Zelda Kedourie-Harahap, Corinne Rebecca Mary MacDonald, Julia Parker, Anat Smith, Chelly Saenz, Francesca Smith and Roberta Vaz. Their work was subsequently reproduced in a small publication Room to Room that McMillan edited, and included a CD of audio interviews with students about their experience of the project.