Hard Graft? The Office Chair as a Site for Decorative Art Interventions

ABSTRACT

As everyday life increasingly conflates home and work, the boundaries between the domestic and the workplace become ever more blurred. The practice-led research presented here tested the ability of decorative art interventions applied to a series of ordinary office chairs, to spotlight and critique this complex relationship. The everydayness of the chair, its familiarity and its easy comparison to the body, make it an ideal site for the ‘wearing’ of artistic interventions. This methodology is based on the fine art concept of intervention and draws on the theoretical positions of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ and Michel de Certeau’s concept of resistance. The materials and techniques used to create these artworks have implications for identity and class, and ‘graft’ is used both as an allusion to labour and to the collage tactics adopted in these artworks. The embodied (sensual and haptic) qualities of these artworks are the features that afford them critical agency, whether through the addition of a Mickey Mouse antimacassar or a ludicrous pile of cushions.

KEYWORDS:

• art intervention
• decoration
• everyday
• chair
• office
• Bourdieu
• habitus
• de Certeau

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Recent attention has also been given to the bed as a further site in which the activities of work and leisure are increasingly mixed as untethered working practices and technology are so widespread (Colomina 2018). However, whilst the bed might be used at home it is less likely to be seen at work (for the time being at least!) whereas the office chair more readily represents both spheres.

2. Other artists that have made direct use of the chair include Pablo Reinoso, Meschac Gaba, Erwin Wurm, Jessica Jackson-Hutchens, Sarah Lucas, Angela de la Cruz, Robert and Trix Haussmann, Richard Woods and Sebastian Wrong, Franz West, Martino Gamper, Marc Camille-Chaimowicz and Julia Lohmann.

3. Whilst there is certainly a look within office chair design that is generally neutral (black and greige colour palette, with hard-wearing textiles) there have been exceptions. One of the earliest swivel chair designs to incorporate an injection-moulded plastic base and spine that is typical of most office chairs was the Ettore Sottsass-designed ‘Synthesis 45’ from 1971-3 (Czerwinski 2009: 76). Unlike many contemporary chairs the plastic in this was bright orange.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Horton

DR. SARAH HORTON IS AN ARTIST AND SENIOR LECTURER AT NORWICH UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS (NUA) WHERE SHE IS ALSO CHAMPION FOR THE PATTERN AND CHAOS RESEARCH GROUP. SHE HAS A BA HONS VISUAL ARTS FROM LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, AN MA FINE ART FROM NUA AND A PRACTICE-BASED PHD FROM NUA/UAL. HER ART PRACTICE INCLUDES SCULPTURE, DRAWING AND PAINTING AND IS LARGELY SITE-RELATED. HER PHD, ENTITLED ‘DECORATION: DISRUPTING THE WORKPLACE AND CHALLENGING THE WORK OF ART’ INDICATES AN ONGOING INTEREST IN THE WAY PATTERN, DECORATION AND ORNAMENT IS USED IN FINE ART. SHE WAS LEARNING CO-ORDINATOR FOR THE NORWICH LEG OF THE BRITISH ART SHOW 8 AND HAS EXHIBITED NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY.