Nathan Coley
Show Home, 2003
North Shields, Tyne & Wear
16.05.2003 - 18.05.2003
The Temporary Art of The Permanent Dream
Idyll or illusion? Every urban dweller has an idealised country cottage painted into their imagination. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to live in the country…someday. But can we really live the rural dream if we had the chance? For many of us those romanticised views of country living would probably turn out to be a nightmare. Our expectations are too high. But why spoil it all by putting them to the test? Why not bring the rural dream to the urban reality? This is exactly what one man is doing.
In this temporary public art project, Show Home, Nathan Coley looks at the nature of the dream home, which is a concept that the modern building developer sells in a lifestyle package. The developer’s dream home is on an estate not on some windswept shore on the Isle of Skye where our imagination has taken us. That is why Coley’s project consists of several different strands – miraculously bringing a modest rural cottage into an urban environment overnight yet uses a promotional media campaign that a large-scale builder would employ to sell his new housing developments.
www.showhome.org.uk
Show Home was curated by Locus+ and co-commissioned by North Tyneside Council.
