‘Objects for an Ideal Home’

The ‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ series is inspired by a 1999 music album — in the electronica genre, as it was labeled in the mid 90s — by that name.

‘Objects for an Ideal Home’ was produced and released by the Danish musician Opiate (Thomas Knak) on record label April Records. In 2009 a 20th year anniversary edition was released by ‘Bit-Phalanx Music’ in a remastered version.

Via Jeremy Deller’s solo exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg

‘Objects for an Ideal Home’, and its Ikea-esque title, came to mind yesterday when photographing parts of Jeremy Deller’s exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg (his first solo exhibition in the Scandinavian countries).

Items from and reflections on the early UK rave scene and electronic music in general are one of Deller’s areas of interest.

“I’m not a painter. I don’t draw, I don’t paint, I don’t do sculptures. But I do more or less everything else” — Jeremy Deller in a 2023 interview with Nanna Rebekka for Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Also see: Copenhagen photographer ~ Bergholt Photography

Serpentine South Gallery, Kensington Gardens

Thomas Knak might have borrowed the title from an 1991 exhibition at the Serpentine South Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London, ‘Objects for the Ideal Home’, subtitled ‘The Legacy of Pop Art’, with a minor difference between the definite and the indefinite article (‘an’ vs ‘the’).

“Attention all DJs. 45 mins before closing time, please play slow jam, revival, old skool soul to calm the crowd. This is an important notice. This is also mandatory”, Jeremy Deller, ‘Warning Graphic Content’ poster, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, July 2023.

Sea Urchin | Object #1b

On objects in relation to the present, Mikhal Bahktin

“Through contact with the present, an object is attracted to the incomplete process of a world-in-the-making and is stamped with the seal of inconclusiveness. No matter how distant this object is from us in time, it is connected to our incomplete, present-day, continuing temporal transitions, it develops a relationship with our unpreparedness, with our present. But meanwhile, our present has been moving into an inconclusive future. And in this inconclusive context, all the semantic stability of the object is lost; its sense and significance are renewed and grow as the context continues to unfold” — Mikhal Bahktin, 1975-1981.