Édouard Vuillard
Le placard à linge (The Linen Cupboard)
c. 1893
26.5 x 21.5 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt
Traditionally gendered as feminine, domestic space becomes an archetype for the social politics and expectations surrounding our ideas of home.
Situated within the historical context of changing attitudes towards the home – both as a physical space and a subject for art – the exhibition takes post-impressionist artist Édouard Vuillard’s The Linen Cupboard (c. 1893) as its reference point. By drawing a line between then and now, Homebodies explores how depictions of the domestic have evolved to reflect both the challenges and solaces of our present moment.
Jess Allen
Jess Allen eradicates the figure from her artworks, instead projecting self-portraits onto the surfaces of domestic objects and locating the sublime in the seemingly mundane. She explores the gulf between our exterior façades and inner worlds, allowing us to glimpse the varying degrees of chaos and order that may lie behind the doors of the linen cupboard.
Jess Allen
(b. 1966, Dorset) spent most of her childhood in London and now lives in Cornwall. She studied at Camberwell College of Arts and has a BA Honours from Falmouth School of Art. Her latest work explores the theme of presence in absence, depicting domestic items or shadow figures that suggest the lingering presence of people. Drawing on memories and the passage of time, she captures evocative snapshots of the ordinary, everyday experiences that we all share.
Recent solo exhibitions include Like Dust, the Shadows Remain, Scroll Gallery, New York (2023); Nobody’s Watching, Blue Shop Gallery, London (2022); and Books and Boxes, Blue Shop Gallery, London (2021). Her work has also been shown in recent group exhibitions at Cub_ism_ Artspace, Shanghai; Scroll Gallery, New York; Morgans, Falmouth; Irving Contemporary, Oxford; and Contemporary Six, Manchester (all 2022).
Jess Allen
Portrait of the female artist as a linen cupboard, no 1
2022
60 x 50 cm
Jess Allen
I am not just a shadow, no 4
2022
76 x 61 cm
Jess Allen
Portrait of the female artist as a linen cupboard, no 2
2022
76 x 60 cm
Mia Pauline Hause
Mia Pauline Hause’s similarly unpeopled artworks draw on the still life tradition, using animated patterning and accumulated trinkets to consider how the objects we choose become portraits of ourselves. Her claustrophobic interior scenes consider the traditional, romanticised image of feminine domesticity as a form of self-preservation when faced with the harsh realities of women’s lived experience.
Mia Pauline Hause
(b. 2000) is a multidisciplinary artist based in upstate New York. She received a BFA in Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2022. In her practice, she uses oil painting and other media to explore intersections of femininity, class and ecology. She seeks out commonalities between the lived experiences of women past and present, drawing on cultural memory in order to make sense of the abject reality of femininity.
Hause works in community arts programmes, helping empower communities and individuals impacted by the opioid crisis to use artistic expression as a tool for advocacy, healing, and community building. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Heirloom Performance, Vestal Museum, Vestal (2022) and Until the Bliss of All This Hurts, Experimental Gallery, Ithaca (2021). Group exhibitions include NAKED LUNCH, Spring Break Art Show, New York (2022); Life as Clouds, String Room Gallery, Aurora (2022); Dog Breakfast, Tjaden Gallery, Ithaca (2021) and Hearsay:Heresy, Spring Break Art Show, New York (2021).
Mia Hause
Cherubs I
2022
76.2 x 61 cm
Mia Hause
Madonna and Child
2022
121.4 x 91.4 cm
Mia Hause
Fly Tape
2023
61 x 50.8 cm
Emily Mannion
Emily Mannion’s sparse paintings centre on imagined domestic spaces, exploring the mind-body connection that occurs in the interior. With a focus on domestic objects and their symbolism, she searches for transcendence in the mundane, creating scenes in which even humble cleaning products may assume monumental significance.
Emily Mannion
is an Irish artist currently based in London. She is a 2022 graduate of the Slade School of Art MFA, where she was awarded the Felix Slade Scholarship and shortlisted for the Sarabande Foundation Scholarship. She creates narrative vignettes culled from personal memory, art history, literature, music and film. They are elusive, imagined spaces in which the interiority of the mind is imprinted on domestic surroundings.
Mannion was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2021) and shortlisted for the Chadwell Award (2022). Selected recent exhibitions include Look Mum No Hands 1: Painting at the Crossroads, 9 French Place, London (2023); A Kind of Human Clothing, Liliya Art Gallery, London; Second Expression, The Split Gallery, London; Why Don’t You Dance?, ASC Gallery, London; Snakes on a Picture Plane, UK Mexican Arts Society, London (all 2022); and Castle of Crossed Destinies, Galeria Dínamo, Porto (2021).
Emily Mannion
Heat
2023
200 x 170 cm
Emily Mannion
Sundown
2023
170 x 140 cm
Emily Mannion
Begins in the night
2023
50 x 40 cm
Emily Mannion
A little dusty
2023
25 x 20 cm
Gregor
Gregor’s paintings reflect on related ideas of embodiment in space and the conflict involved in trying to reconcile mind and body, interior and exterior – opposing states that are often aligned with gender binaries. As the viewer tries to negotiate the impossible architecture of the painted spaces, they implicitly triangulate themselves in relation to these various states of being.
Gregor
is a New York-based visual artist who is an MFA Painting candidate at CUNY Hunter College (2025) and holds a BFA Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (2019). Their work investigates metaphysical ideas of body and space through the materiality of paint and canvas surface. In her practice, Gregor encourages the viewer to relinquish their own point of view and instead to imaginatively project themselves into another’s perspective or mindset, destabilising the concept of “self” and “other”.
Recent solo exhibitions include Visions and Revisions, Moira Fitzsimmons Arons Art Gallery, Hamden Hall, Connecticut (2023) and Embodiments, Tomato Mouse, Brooklyn (2022). Group exhibitions include The Mind Roams: Abstraction for a New Age, St Joseph’s University, Brooklyn (2023); Terrible Terrible, 205 Hudson Gallery, New York (2023); SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2022, New York (2022); Among Friends, NY Artists Equity Association, New York (2022) and Intimacies, MAPSpace, Port Chester (2022).
Gregor
Femme Sans Tête
2023
107 x 61 cm
Gregor
Medium
2022
91 x 122 cm
Gregor
Strange Loop
2022
140 x 84 cm
Judith Grassl
Judith Grassl considers the trajectory of time and history in her pristinely constructed interior scenes, which incorporate fragments from her previous paintings and the art historical canon. In these works, she implicitly reflects on the historical omission of women artists and her own position in relation to this canon, as well as changing perceptions of domesticity through time.
Judith Grassl
(b. 1985) is a German artist who lives and works in Munich. She completed her training at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich in 2016, followed by several artist residencies in Europe, including in Austria and Bulgaria. In her practice, Grassl combines fragments of familiar images with art historical references in layered, collage-like compositions. Different painterly perspectives overlap in eerily empty rooms, which are transformed into stage sets in which these various image fragments converge.
Recent exhibitions include Schöne Mutanten, KALI Gallery, Lucerne (2023); Bittersweet, Galerie Cyprian Brenner, Niederalfingen (2022); To Bodily Go…, Superzoom, Miami (2022); Gifts, KALI Gallery, Lucerne; am Ende gewinnt der Troll, Orangerie, Munich; Re-Inszenierung, Gallery Filser & Gräf, Munich; and Debütant:innen-Ausstellung, Künstlerhaus Nürnberg (all 2021). Her work is held in the permanent collection of Bayrische Staatsgemäldesammlung, Munich.
Judith Grassl
rooms I
2021
170 x 150 cm
Private collection
Judith Grassl
rooms II
2021
170 x 150 cm
Judith Grassl
rooms III
2021
170 x 150 cm
Nina Raber-Urgessa
Nina Raber-Urgessa invokes the maternal body as a safe haven or shelter in figures whose yogic contortions also suggest the ways in which women, particularly mothers, reshape themselves to fit the traditional expectations of domesticity. She is interested in giving visibility to these daily struggles, as well as celebrating the embodiment of a psychological safe space that you can carry within yourself and share with others.
Nina Raber-Urgessa
(b. 1982) is from Bodensee, Germany and currently lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a trained art therapist, she has worked extensively with refugees and abused women and children in her country of birth, addressing trauma and healing through art. These experiences are combined with autobiographical ones in paintings that balance ideas of personal struggle, inner strength and safe shelter.
Recent solo exhibitions include …THE WIFE OF…, Moa Anbessa Art Studio Gallery, Addis Ababa (2023); Between Me & You, Atelier Urgessa, Nürtingen (2021); Reizkörper, Galerie Schacher – Raum für Kunst, Stuttgart (2021); Ichundich, Provisorium, Nürtingen (2014). Selected group shows include Apokalypse Ciao!, Galerienhaus, Stuttgart (2020); Ich halte dich festhalten, Galerie Schacher – Raum für Kunst, Stuttgart (2019); and Zwischenich, Winzerverein, Meersburg (2012). Raber-Urgessa taught art at the AIDS orphanage God’s Golden Children in South Africa (2003–04), was instrumental in creating a centre for refugees in Germany where she offered art therapy (2012–21), and worked as an art therapist in a women and children’s shelter at Frauenhaus Kirchheim (2015–22).
Nina Raber-Urgessa
Terepeza
2022
150 x 170 cm
Nina Raber-Urgessa
Tefash Tafach
2022
130 x 120 cm
Nina Raber-Urgessa
Fit le Fit
2022
150 x 170 cm
Gori Mora
Gori Mora similarly positions the domestic as a haven – specifically in relation to queer identity, intimacy and desire – in scenes presented to the viewer in tantalising fragments. In these imagined or remembered scenes, home becomes a safe space, removed from the pressures of the outside world, where one’s true self can be expressed and celebrated.
Gori Mora
(b. 1992, Mallorca) is a Spanish artist based in Glasgow, where he received an MA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2018. His work explores the history of the queer community and our contemporary moment in which technology mediates social interactions, personal perceptions and values. He explores themes of desire and intimacy, thinking about how relationships form and bodies interact in a world increasingly experienced through touchscreens.
Recent exhibitions include Layering Intimacy, Galería Pelaires, Mallorca ; Imagining Reality, Future Gallery, Berlin; Come Out & Play, BEERS London; Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Tuesday to Friday Gallery, Valencia (all 2022); ANDIAMO!, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh; and Mapping Desire, BEERS London (both 2021). His work Stormy day was acquired by X Museum, Beijing in 2023 and his project My Florence Souvenir is in the collection of the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.
Gori Mora
Study of a room
2021
120 x 110 cm
Private collection
Gori Mora
Night in a Glasgow room
2022
103 x 120 cm
Collection of Brian Gemino
Gori Mora
Study of a bath
2022
130 x 120 cm
Private collection
The varied perspectives represented in the exhibition endeavour to collapse the binaries that have previously defined domestic space, such as the "feminine" interior versus the "masculine" exterior, or the mundane versus the sublime. In this way, the home becomes a shared realm that is untethered from fixed expectations and adjusted to accommodate the needs and desires of those who inhabit it.
Essay by Rose Pickering
Édouard Vuillard and the Context of Representing Domesticity
Post-impressionist painter Édouard Vuillard is an important reference point for the Homebodies exhibition, in which contemporary artists redefine conventions of domesticity.
Chosen Charity
Shelter
Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home and fight the devastating impact the housing emergency has on people and society. Shelter believes that home is everything.
“We are delighted that Unit London has chosen to support Shelter and join the Fight for Home. Every four minutes a household in England becomes homeless. Record-high rents and soaring living costs mean many more people are at risk of being tipped into homelessness this winter. Funds raised from this exhibition will help Shelter’s frontline services to continue providing free and expert help to anyone facing homelessness, as well as campaigning for lasting change.”
– Sulayman Uddin, Regional Community Fundraiser, North London