HOMEMAKER FEATURE AND INTERVIEW

Modern culture’s long-standing obsession with youth makes Nottingham-based artist Jeanie Finlay’s interest in the lives and voices of the elderly something of a rarity. Homemaker is an exploration of the lives of seven people, four from South Derbyshire, three from Tokyo, seen through the lenses of their memories and homes.

“Homemaker came about after I’d worked on a participatory digital arts project called Tea-Toast-Technology”, Finlay notes. “That had involved three years’ work with older people, and afterwards I was interested in doing more. There’s something fascinating about those with so many stories to tell, and such rich life experiences to pass on.”

The original idea was a small-scale piece, documenting the lives and memories of four housebound people in South Derbyshire using a mix of digital video footage and panoramic photography, showing each person in a living room, and using the contents to tell the life story of its inhabitant.

“It would be someone talking about a thimble collection”, she explains, “but that would lead to other stories. Because they were housebound, they’d often had to move from a large house to a small flat or bungalow, so there’d be a lifetime’s possessions, and a lifetime’s material contained in a single room”.

The initial work’s reputation spread, and the piece eventually made its way to Japan, where Finlay was offered the chance to expand it.

“I lived there for around a month, trying out my terrible Japanese, and managed to make three additional pieces with elderly people in Tokyo. What’s happened now is that the two pieces of work have come together in a two-room set, a bit like a doll’s house.

The Derbyshire room is modelled closely on that of an elderly lady named Florrie, while the Tokyo setting requires that viewers remove their shoes and kneel on a traditional katami mat to interact with the films, which are screened near life-size. Finlay hopes that the distinct settings will emphasise the cultural differences, but also allow parallels to be drawn.

“It was intriguing to see that Japanese people, or at least those with Buddhist beliefs, have shrines dedicated to people who have passed on in their living rooms. It struck me as not unlike the way Derbyshire people had mementoes of partners and parents on their mantelpieces”, she says. “At the same time, there are very big differences, such as the way that the Tokyo people, even in their mid-eighties, live entirely crouched at floor level.”

One of the Tokyo women, Aiko-San, explained to Finlay that she had photographed the clouds from her window every day for over 30 years, not as an art project, but simply to ‘preserve the moment’. Having herself died six months after the project ended, Finlay notes that many of the participants were motivated by a desire to leave a record.

“Four of those who took part are now gone”, she points out, “so the work over time becomes a memorial as well as an exploration of our ideas about home. But others are still very much with us, and Ray, one of the Derbyshire men, is so stylish, entertaining and open that I think of him as an ‘anti-pensioner’ because he’s so unlike the stereotype”.

Finlay also suggests that the Tokyo pensioners seemed less isolated than their Derbyshire counterparts, but wonders how much of that difference might be due to particular, individual circumstances, how much culturally based.

“People seem more prepared to listen to and learn from the old in Japan than they do in the UK”, she says, “but this work is about creating portraits of seven very different individuals. In the end, I hope the work will nudge viewers to think about their own lives, to reflect on where they might be in old age, and to consider what makes a home”.

Wayne Burrows Metro Nottingham