Home truths
Most people own collections of some sort, but how many of us could actually share our living space with museum objects, art installations, and - most challenging of all - the public? Deborah Mulhearn finds out what it's like to live in a museum
Adam Nankervis is used to complete strangers wandering round his flat. In fact he encourages them, because his flat is MuseumMAN, a museum and art gallery that is open to the public. The top floor flat, in a handsome Georgian house in Liverpool city centre, hosts a constantly changing programme of exhibitions, performances and events.
People using their homes to display art is not just an attempt to avoid what Nankervis calls the 'fascistic contracts' of the big galleries. It is also because domestic spaces, whether they are whole houses, kitchens or even toilets, continue to fascinate contemporary artists.
These settings are used for displays, installations and events as part of performances in themselves. Artist-led spaces such as the Apartment, a flat in a high-rise block in Manchester where a resident artist lives and works, are gaining currency.
But Nankervis, an Australian artist, performer and curator well-known on the alternative arts scene, takes the concept much further by living permanently surrounded, not just by the art, but also by an extraordinary collection of objets trouvés.
Paintings, collages, sculptures and other 'made' art jostle for space with masks, mirrors, dolls, puppets, stage props, headdresses, hats, religious icons, lamps, toys, statuettes and even genuine museum objects that look like natural history specimens. It turns out they are - found dumped in the street outside a museum in Germany, Nankervis says.
Every space of Nankervis's smallish flat is crammed with bits and pieces that he has picked up or been given. In fact it's difficult to spot where he sleeps until he points out a pallet covered with an old German flag with a red Brandenburg eagle. ('Nothing sinister - I used to live in Berlin,' he explains.)
The place is a minimalist's nightmare. 'Invited artists are encouraged to make interventions,' he says, 'and they have to negotiate the space.' Some do, but usually they display or perform in the front room, which Nankervis is happy to clear to provide a more conventional space. 'It has an underground profile, but a far reaching one. Artists see it as a genuine prospect to reach an audience.'
It may be self-styled, unregistered and have little monetary value, but Nankervis can relate the 'story' behind every object, its significance and why it is where it is on any particular day.
'It may not look like it but there is order in the chaos, and every piece has an intimacy,' he says. 'It is the concept of a museum but it's my home as well. The objects are precious to me and that fact is respected by artists and visitors.'
The flat evokes the 17th and 18th century 'cabinet of curiosities' tradition, where travellers and eccentrics such as John Tradescant and Sir John Soane designed their homes to display their collections of art and antiquities. These, after all, became the first museums.
Nankervis explains that ten years ago he moved into a flat in East Berlin and found the discarded belongings and paraphernalia of the previous tenant, an elderly man who had died. Rather than throw it all out, he decided to create displays as a homage to this unknown man.
This became MuseumMAN, a reference to his own initials and to the unknown man. His own art and ephemera became interspersed with it and he started to curate exhibitions around it all. He came to the North West in 2004 to take part in the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Arts with a cut-down version of MuseumMAN and decided to stay.
'Every time it moves it changes,' says Nankervis. 'I've transplanted vanloads, but everything stacks, and it's possible to dismantle and move a whole room in an hour.'
With up to 200 people at exhibition openings, the potential for damage or theft is high, though he has never had a problem. 'It's not an imposition to me. It's all done by word of mouth and I'm always amazed at the diversity of people who come, everyone from cleaning ladies to doctors, from taxi drivers to students.
Part of the seduction for me is that they are not traditional gallery-goers and so don't have preconceptions - my policy is open door.'
Lucy Whetstone, the curator at Newcastle University's Hatton Gallery, says: 'The notion of a work of art that needs to be maintained is a museum concept, not an artist's concept.'
Whetstone believes MuseumMAN owes something to the spirit of Kurt Schwitters, the German artist famous for his collages and his constructions of found objects, which he called Merzbau. The Hatton Gallery holds the only surviving example of Merzbau.
'Schwitters used to go round the streets with a handcart picking up discarded everyday objects and taking them back to incorporate into his artworks. This became an installation that took over his house, inside which he formed what he called grottoes and the robber's cave.'
Marisa Rueda, a London-based artist who has displayed at MuseumMAN, says context changes everything. 'Museums and galleries are a clean way of showing but they don't always reflect the context of how the art was made. And there are so many different types of spaces where one exhibits nowadays, so it's no different really from a bar or any other alternative space. And I think the idea of living in the art is beautiful.'
You have to be a certain sort of person to continually welcome total strangers into your home, even if you do live in a museum. Dennis Severs was an eccentric American who bought a house in Spitalfields, east London, and recreated it as the home of a family of Huguenot silk weavers.
It's an evocative experience, with tours conducted in silence and the sights, sounds and smells of early 18th-century lives pervading the house. But Severs, who died in 1999, hated it to be called a museum and, apparently, if he didn't like the look of a visitor he wouldn't let them in.
The National Trust has about 50 properties with live-in custodians and they'd soon be out of a job - and home - if they behaved like Severs. Personality and attitude is a crucial element in the visitor experience - you have to immerse yourself in the period and the inhabitant's life while still maintaining a distance.
Tenants are often 'empty nesters' with few family commitments as tenancy can be restricting, with certain properties having specific obligations.
They are responsible for the care and maintenance of interiors, decoration and garden if there is one. Opening hours may vary, but the work doesn't stop when the visitors have gone, says Lin Skippings, custodian of Thomas Carlyle's house in London. Skippings and her husband Geoff live in a one bedroomed flat on the second floor of the house.
The house is closed during the winter because it has no modern lighting or heating, but Skippings is often on duty. 'I'm responsible 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have to arrange a locum for when I am away. I can't go far in case an alarm goes off, but that's not really a hardship in this lovely part of London.'
Skippings deals with everything from budgets to building regulations. 'I handle requests from journalists, film crews, scholars and so on. I do the dusting and clean the toilet. I even garden in the spirit of Jane Carlyle, planting vegetables among the flowers, as the Victorians did.'
But Skippings says that the hard work is worthwhile when the visitors start arriving.
'You never know who is going to come through the door. It's lovely to take the time to talk and particularly to listen to them. The spirit of the Carlyles is very much within the house; they lived here so long that their imprint is in the building.'
Back in Liverpool, another National Trust property with a lot of atmosphere is the former home of Paul McCartney. 'Around one hundred Beatles songs were written here and though it's an ordinary council house, it is a magical place,' says custodian John Halliday, a self-confessed Beatlemaniac.
He loves living in his idol's house, but is also clear about carving his own space. 'I still really enjoy meeting all the visitors, but in the winter I'm glad of the peace and quiet. When I first moved in I felt like an Elvis fan living in Graceland, but after eight years my first thought when I come in is, where's the kettle?'
The house is closed in the winter, and Halliday can resume normal life, bringing mod cons downstairs and storing away the 1950s furniture. 'It's meant to have a lived-in, dusty feel because McCartney's mother died a year after they moved in and not a lot of housework was done after that, so his brother Mike told me,' he explains.
'It can take over your life if you're not careful,' warns Halliday. People knock at all times of day and even at night, despite the stern notice on the front fence telling people they can only visit by booking. Halliday doesn't let them in.
'I made a rule right from the start that I haven't broken, even though sometimes I feel sorry for them. Of course I'd make an exception for Paul McCartney. He has knocked a couple of times, and both times I was out!'
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
People using their homes to display art is not just an attempt to avoid what Nankervis calls the 'fascistic contracts' of the big galleries. It is also because domestic spaces, whether they are whole houses, kitchens or even toilets, continue to fascinate contemporary artists.
These settings are used for displays, installations and events as part of performances in themselves. Artist-led spaces such as the Apartment, a flat in a high-rise block in Manchester where a resident artist lives and works, are gaining currency.
But Nankervis, an Australian artist, performer and curator well-known on the alternative arts scene, takes the concept much further by living permanently surrounded, not just by the art, but also by an extraordinary collection of objets trouvés.
Paintings, collages, sculptures and other 'made' art jostle for space with masks, mirrors, dolls, puppets, stage props, headdresses, hats, religious icons, lamps, toys, statuettes and even genuine museum objects that look like natural history specimens. It turns out they are - found dumped in the street outside a museum in Germany, Nankervis says.
Every space of Nankervis's smallish flat is crammed with bits and pieces that he has picked up or been given. In fact it's difficult to spot where he sleeps until he points out a pallet covered with an old German flag with a red Brandenburg eagle. ('Nothing sinister - I used to live in Berlin,' he explains.)
The place is a minimalist's nightmare. 'Invited artists are encouraged to make interventions,' he says, 'and they have to negotiate the space.' Some do, but usually they display or perform in the front room, which Nankervis is happy to clear to provide a more conventional space. 'It has an underground profile, but a far reaching one. Artists see it as a genuine prospect to reach an audience.'
It may be self-styled, unregistered and have little monetary value, but Nankervis can relate the 'story' behind every object, its significance and why it is where it is on any particular day.
'It may not look like it but there is order in the chaos, and every piece has an intimacy,' he says. 'It is the concept of a museum but it's my home as well. The objects are precious to me and that fact is respected by artists and visitors.'
The flat evokes the 17th and 18th century 'cabinet of curiosities' tradition, where travellers and eccentrics such as John Tradescant and Sir John Soane designed their homes to display their collections of art and antiquities. These, after all, became the first museums.
Nankervis explains that ten years ago he moved into a flat in East Berlin and found the discarded belongings and paraphernalia of the previous tenant, an elderly man who had died. Rather than throw it all out, he decided to create displays as a homage to this unknown man.
This became MuseumMAN, a reference to his own initials and to the unknown man. His own art and ephemera became interspersed with it and he started to curate exhibitions around it all. He came to the North West in 2004 to take part in the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Arts with a cut-down version of MuseumMAN and decided to stay.
'Every time it moves it changes,' says Nankervis. 'I've transplanted vanloads, but everything stacks, and it's possible to dismantle and move a whole room in an hour.'
With up to 200 people at exhibition openings, the potential for damage or theft is high, though he has never had a problem. 'It's not an imposition to me. It's all done by word of mouth and I'm always amazed at the diversity of people who come, everyone from cleaning ladies to doctors, from taxi drivers to students.
Part of the seduction for me is that they are not traditional gallery-goers and so don't have preconceptions - my policy is open door.'
Lucy Whetstone, the curator at Newcastle University's Hatton Gallery, says: 'The notion of a work of art that needs to be maintained is a museum concept, not an artist's concept.'
Whetstone believes MuseumMAN owes something to the spirit of Kurt Schwitters, the German artist famous for his collages and his constructions of found objects, which he called Merzbau. The Hatton Gallery holds the only surviving example of Merzbau.
'Schwitters used to go round the streets with a handcart picking up discarded everyday objects and taking them back to incorporate into his artworks. This became an installation that took over his house, inside which he formed what he called grottoes and the robber's cave.'
Marisa Rueda, a London-based artist who has displayed at MuseumMAN, says context changes everything. 'Museums and galleries are a clean way of showing but they don't always reflect the context of how the art was made. And there are so many different types of spaces where one exhibits nowadays, so it's no different really from a bar or any other alternative space. And I think the idea of living in the art is beautiful.'
You have to be a certain sort of person to continually welcome total strangers into your home, even if you do live in a museum. Dennis Severs was an eccentric American who bought a house in Spitalfields, east London, and recreated it as the home of a family of Huguenot silk weavers.
It's an evocative experience, with tours conducted in silence and the sights, sounds and smells of early 18th-century lives pervading the house. But Severs, who died in 1999, hated it to be called a museum and, apparently, if he didn't like the look of a visitor he wouldn't let them in.
The National Trust has about 50 properties with live-in custodians and they'd soon be out of a job - and home - if they behaved like Severs. Personality and attitude is a crucial element in the visitor experience - you have to immerse yourself in the period and the inhabitant's life while still maintaining a distance.
Tenants are often 'empty nesters' with few family commitments as tenancy can be restricting, with certain properties having specific obligations.
They are responsible for the care and maintenance of interiors, decoration and garden if there is one. Opening hours may vary, but the work doesn't stop when the visitors have gone, says Lin Skippings, custodian of Thomas Carlyle's house in London. Skippings and her husband Geoff live in a one bedroomed flat on the second floor of the house.
The house is closed during the winter because it has no modern lighting or heating, but Skippings is often on duty. 'I'm responsible 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have to arrange a locum for when I am away. I can't go far in case an alarm goes off, but that's not really a hardship in this lovely part of London.'
Skippings deals with everything from budgets to building regulations. 'I handle requests from journalists, film crews, scholars and so on. I do the dusting and clean the toilet. I even garden in the spirit of Jane Carlyle, planting vegetables among the flowers, as the Victorians did.'
But Skippings says that the hard work is worthwhile when the visitors start arriving.
'You never know who is going to come through the door. It's lovely to take the time to talk and particularly to listen to them. The spirit of the Carlyles is very much within the house; they lived here so long that their imprint is in the building.'
Back in Liverpool, another National Trust property with a lot of atmosphere is the former home of Paul McCartney. 'Around one hundred Beatles songs were written here and though it's an ordinary council house, it is a magical place,' says custodian John Halliday, a self-confessed Beatlemaniac.
He loves living in his idol's house, but is also clear about carving his own space. 'I still really enjoy meeting all the visitors, but in the winter I'm glad of the peace and quiet. When I first moved in I felt like an Elvis fan living in Graceland, but after eight years my first thought when I come in is, where's the kettle?'
The house is closed in the winter, and Halliday can resume normal life, bringing mod cons downstairs and storing away the 1950s furniture. 'It's meant to have a lived-in, dusty feel because McCartney's mother died a year after they moved in and not a lot of housework was done after that, so his brother Mike told me,' he explains.
'It can take over your life if you're not careful,' warns Halliday. People knock at all times of day and even at night, despite the stern notice on the front fence telling people they can only visit by booking. Halliday doesn't let them in.
'I made a rule right from the start that I haven't broken, even though sometimes I feel sorry for them. Of course I'd make an exception for Paul McCartney. He has knocked a couple of times, and both times I was out!'
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist