Home Sweet Home

The Exhibition

‘Home Sweet Home’ is an exhibition of photography and cross-stitch samplers that tell the story of a dispersed community. The community are the residents of the Ferrier, a large housing estate in Kidbrooke, south-east London, which is being gradually demolished to make way for a new development.

‘Home Sweet Home’ officially ran from 2nd – 9th October 2011, but was intended for the images to remain on the estate until the buildings were demolished. With emphasis on the human experience of regeneration, photographer Anna Batchelor has taken portraits of the remaining residents of the Ferrier in the context of the changing estate. For this exhibition Batchelor  fly-posted the portraits back onto the boarded up fronts of the empty houses, relocating the work in the environment in which it was created.

Sarah Colson fused the craft of cross-stitch embroidery with quotations from Ferrier residents and imagery from the estate’s environment. The pieces were designed to tell the story of the displacement, and also exhibited on the emptying estate.  The delicate and precise samplers stood in stark contrast to the demolition and chaos that was the Ferrier.