In December 2014 I was invited to present a chapter of my MA dissertation research at the Royal College of Art’s conference entitled “The Archive and Domestic or Private Space”. Below is a transcript of my presentation, the full title of which is: "THE SECRET ROOM: Unravelling And Revealing The False Truths Of Kettle’s Yard".
Kettle’s Yard House is a museum / gallery / house / archive and/or way of life nestled in amongst the streets of Cambridge.
In 1956, art enthusiast and collector H.S. Ede (known as Jim to his friends), settled himself and his vast collections of painting, sculpture and objects in Cambridge, forming Kettle’s Yard. Ede opened the house to the public in 1958, describing it as "a living place where works of art could be enjoyed . . . where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery." In 1966 the house and its collections in their entirety were donated to the University of Cambridge. 1970 saw a large extension to the house and a small gallery space built before the Ede’s left Kettle’s Yard for retirement in Edinburgh. Since then the location has seen the addition of a large contemporary gallery space, hosting temporary art exhibitions. The Kettle’s Yard site therefore has grown considerably beyond the house but since Ede’s retirement little has changed within. His way of life remains just as he left it, preserved as an archive of an existence spent proffering the feasibility of everyday life surrounded by art.
Kettle’s Yard presents itself as a working domestic space heightened by the presence of art amongst everyday objects; simultaneously a functional home and a public venue of aesthetic appreciation. However, Ede rejected its associations with terms such as "museum" or "gallery", perhaps endeavouring to align it further with the idea of the home. Surprisingly Kettle’s Yard has been subjected to very little academic scrutiny and much of that which has been written is dewy eyed, rose-tinted tourist fodder, ripe for the coffee table. My research however has suggested Kettle’s Yard was less a feasible lived environment but a construction of a lifestyle based on a staged aesthetic, an unreachable model for living.
The house museum is a common phenomenon but often said “home” is made public, and thus a museum, posthumously. Rarely discussed is the act of calling a “museum” one’s home and the physical and mental obligations of that. It is easy here to don those same rose-tinted spectacles and merely consider how wonderful it might have been to live at Kettle’s Yard. This is the impression one might have received from Ede. However, often it is forgotten that he was not the only person to reside amongst the collections.
It seems that Helen, Ede’s wife of more than 50 years, may have lived outside of the super-essential light of Kettle’s Yard and amongst the shadows, as, many visitors were unaware that Jim was married.
This research utilises the figure of Helen, both in Kettle’s Yard’s past and present, as a method by which to examine the questionable proffered truths of the Kettle’s Yard aesthetic domestic. I follow the lead of many a resident artist at the house who have also recognised Helen as a methodology to study the institution, many of whom I must thank for their insight.
Kettle’s Yard tells the visitor very little about Helen, merely presenting her as an occurrence within the space.
Today, her rooms (she slept separately from Ede) are dressed simply and similarly to the rest of the house, with a few awkwardly hung paintings and seemingly random trinkets, and for the visitor there is no prompt to suggest this isn’t exactly as it was when Helen resided here. The visitor is led to believe that, as every other space in the house is maintained from Ede’s time, that this room is preserved also.
ReCollection, Kettle’s Yard’s Oral History archive, describes, through testimonial from Helen’s daughters and friends, how Helen was not actively involved in the running of Kettle’s Yard, nor was she particularly enthusiastic about its premise or its control over her daily life:
“She got very fed up and hard pressed by the sort of things she was made to do and she must have been very exhausted and often longed for a more normal life and yet she knew he [Jim Ede] wouldn't be happy living a normal life. She was totally loyal but at the same time suffered a good deal.”
Whilst the Edes lived at Kettle’s Yard Helen’s bedroom was the only space at that was not open to the public, every other space, including the kitchen, visitors were welcome to enter. The House Guide published in 1980 makes no mention of Helen's room at all. After the Ede’s departure to Edinburgh in 1973, Helen’s room was, we presume, emptied and the space was used as an office by Kettle’s Yard staff. It was not opened to the viewing public until the late 1980s, long after Helen’s death and just before Ede’s. Thus these rooms were never arranged by Ede but once open were hung in what was called ‘the tradition of Jim’s aesthetic’ by Kettle’s Yard staff. This secondary "Jim-ing" of Helen’s room demonstrates an unreality in Kettle’s Yard but it is interesting that this is not openly communicated to the visitor, except on the website’s "virtual tour".
Anne Eggebert, an artist in residence in 1999, points out that it would have been a much more effective critical reflection to leave the room as Helen had it, "a true reflection of the domestic". This seeming cover-up highlights an unreality that Eggebert notices in Kettle’s Yard as a whole.
It is possible that Helen may have taken everything with her upon moving to Edinburgh, hence the room being empty and used as an office. In this act therefore it is through Helen’s agency that she is erased from the impossible model for living that Kettle's Yard presents. However it is unlikely that Helen’s belongings married with the Kettle’s Yard aesthetic, therefore recreating Helen’s room, although providing an interesting opportunity to be self-reflective, would only highlight Kettle’s Yard’s impossible ideal further.
It could be suggested that Helen is only present at Kettle’s Yard in her absence; her seeming lack of influence within the domestic spaces demonstrates her distance. Judith Goddard addressed this idea of an absent presence in her residency at Kettle’s Yard in 1995 and again in her recreation of the work in 2009.
Goddard rearranged Helen’s room and sealed it from the public with a transparent screen doorway. A secret video camera beamed a live feed to a television screen outside of the room, showing parts not visible through the doorway. Goddard intended to "invoke a sense of the presence of its former occupant Helen." In 2009 advancements in technology meant Goddard could not produce the same pensive human gaze she had previously. A narrower view and high-definition clarity suggested the eye of the machine not of a person. Goddard’s surmised that "if in 1995 'Helen's Room' spoke of presence, the 2009 version speaks more of absence." Goddard recalls a surprising conversation with the Kettle’s Yard staff:
"She's not here" ... they looked at me quizzically. I [Goddard] added, "I think she's left the building."
"Its about time." They [the Kettle’s Yard staff] replied, "It's been 36 years!"
This suggests something of the intentions of Kettle’s Yard in the preservation and conservation of Helen and her memory. Clearly the truth of Helen is much less of a priority, particularly if it is likely to contradict the philosophy of the house as a whole.
Helen’s role was plainly within the domestic domain, Recollection testimony from Helen’s daughters remembers her grinding coffee and making mayonnaise. But the Kettle’s Yard aesthetic, as a result of Ede’s vision, is not one of a functional day-to-day working domestic environment; he creates a set, an aesthetic experience for the viewer, not for the occupier. Perhaps we can go as far as to say this aesthetic experience came at the expense of the occupier, especially for a non-partaker, as was Helen’s case. However the preservation of everything, bar the working domestic objects, demonstrates a value system within Kettle's Yard, preserving only that which is intrinsic to Jim Ede’s aesthetic domestic.
For example Ede’s lemon, placed on a specific pewter plate, is replaced almost daily with a certain type of lemon, of a specific size, colour and shape, and has been for the last 50 odd years. Through this act the lemon is removed from the domestic sphere and is heightened into a purely aesthetic realm. Conversely, close to nothing is preserved from the kitchen, similarly to Helen’s room.
Today Kettle’s Yard hints at this sense of absence in a rather obtuse manner whilst describing the works that now hang in Helen’s bedroom.
For example, William Scott’s Still Life with White Mug is described as having a:
“Fascinating play between presence and absence, which is also highlighted by the ghostly representation of the mugs, visible but partly erased. The subject of the painting once again underlines the importance of everyday objects at Kettle’s Yard.”
The exhibition of this work in Helen’s room and the description afforded it make an almost too obvious reference to Helen but casually dismissing her with a counter reference to the importance of everyday objects. It has to be wondered whether has been made on purpose.
In conclusion, the misrepresentation of Helen’s bedroom within Kettle’s Yard points to the malleable qualities of the archive and the requirement of the audience to be aware of this. Kettle’s Yard, seemingly a preserved truth, is in fact a constructed façade for its contemporary audience, that, in actuality, draws attention to its inherent falsity, even in Ede’s conception of the space.
Helen’s being at Kettle’s Yard, whether in absence or in presence, points to the impossibility that is Ede’s ideal lifestyle. Helen represents all that is missing in a working home, the truly domestic. But, due to her misrepresentation, we may never know what it was truly like to live at Kettle’s Yard.
(Image credits to Kettle's Yard House and Gallery, Judith Goddard & Brian Ferry.)
