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M A N T E L P I E C E

[room without walls]

Mantelpiece is a collaborative and participatory public art project commissioned by Domain, a new residential development in Reading.

Displayed in a room without walls, the piece examines what it means to call a house a home through the playful reimagining of discarded suburban objects: the lost buttons, empty pens, broken spectacles that drift into the corners of our living space; filling the jam jar by the telephone, the junk drawer in the kitchen…

A large collection of these fragments – donated by local shops, found while litter picking and given by people in the west Reading area – have been amassed and woven together into an imaginary landscape, set above a mantelpiece in a room without walls.

Members of the public are invited to contemplate the work sitting in an armchair, carved from a solid piece of oak, evoking the quiet time we spend in contemplation before the fire, watching tv or looking out upon the world from a window.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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“here i still can sit staring while i write
across to the hill and watch things
happening, here i can watch the breadman he being unaware.

so please if you are there be silent.”

Mary Riley

The Team

Artists

Nick Garnett

The artist Nick Garnett, surrounded by strange objects, with one eye magnified through a looking glass

Nick has been a freelance artist for 20 years producing public commissions for the National Trust, Natural England, and various local councils. In his previous life he worked in collaboration with Newbury-based Thrift Music Theatre giving life to E.R.I.C, an antique computerised entity, providing immersive learning experiences for thousands of children.

He has work extensively with various carnival companies designing and building large outdoor performances and processions. These days Nick has metamorphosed and become Alan D Dreamharvest, Founder of the Annual Daydream Harvest, a highly secretive disorganisation working to make the world a less ordinary place.

Participatory Artists

The Urbandingers

Since the pandemic, Nick has been working with a small group of residents of Whitley in Reading, dedicated creative individuals who have since become known as The Urbandingers.

“Key players in several Arts Council funded projects as part of the Annual Daydream Harvest’s ‘Flamboyance’ programme, they very kindly offered to take part in the creation of the Domain project, collecting and collating lost objects. Their enthusiastic contribution has been invaluable.”

Mary Riley

Mary Riley was an artist who lived and worked in Reading for many years. A great mentor to many people, and a dedicated socialist.

“I never worked with Mary but we moved in the same circles. We shared an interest in small discarded objects, their previous lives and their value in the telling of new stories. When I was first pitching for the Domain commission, Mary instantly struck me as being a natural collaborator. I sent her a message but unfortunately, I found out some days later that Mary had died six months earlier. Working with Lisa Marie Gibb, who was a very close friend of Mary’s, I was able to use some of Mary’s collection in the final piece. Its a great pleasure to be able to work with you at last Mary Riley”

Design and Build

Live Edge Design

Andy Trevorrow in the Live Edge workshop

Digital woodworker Andy Trevorrow set up Live Edge Design with his partner Andy Becalick in 2020 after he was made redundant from the telecoms industry.

Specialising in high-end bespoke furniture, Live Edge Design have worked on many unique projects, including resin river tables, solid hardwood live edge worktops, loudspeaker cabinets, bars, signage, window seats and art projects.

The Room without Walls installation was designed in CAD, using a CNC machine to complete the timber elements of the project and then constructed by the team.

Sustainability/
Technical

Charlie Robinson

Charlie Robinson building a lithium ion battery

Coming from a background in sustainable construction and development, Charlie Robinson has spent the last few years and designing and building UAV surveying technology, battery-operated and festival sound-systems as well as the systems on his off-grid, solar-powered, electric boat which he lives on with his family.

Charlie calculated the carbon footprint of this project, experimented with mycoremediation as a form of waste management, and supported with technical aspects of the mantelpiece and the build itself.

Read the carbon footprint report here

Fabricators and Suppliers

Where possible we used local traders and suppliers, keeping sustainability credentials a priority to help create the finished piece.

Fabricators

Blockwork by Sandy Frew
Render by FLATOUT Render Ltd.
Metalwork by Shadow Supplies

Suppliers

Exposed joinery (UK grown and sawn oak) by OakMax
Blocks supplied by Peppard Building supplies
Render supplied by Old House Stores
Deckboards supplied by Envirobuild

Public turned Personal

Words by Nick Garnett

When I started the Domain project, the original proposal for Mantelpiece centred around the idea of an open, communal, shared living space. To gather the small collections of objects and significant totems of suburban life that accumulate in the corners of our rooms and wardrobes, on bedside tables and in the jam jar by your telephone, and to make a room without walls, to create a space that was open to everyone.

Whilst creating the piece, my family and I were devastated when our landlords served a Section 21 no-fault eviction notice which gave myself, my wife and our 5 children just four months to vacate our home of 27 years. Confronted with the threat of losing the physical space that had become imbued with the very essence of our family life, the concept of a room without walls now took on a very different personal significance.

Despite mounting a loud and public resistance to the the eviction, during which time my wife narrowly survived a near fatal brain haemorrhage, we were forced to leave in September 2023, while Mantelpiece was being built.

Our house was one of over 50 residential properties one the Mapledurham Estate where, ironically, the main house stands empty. Throughout the process, our absent landlords refused to communicate with us directly, and so we decided to communicate them by installing our daughter’s bedroom on the lawn of their 16th century mansionhouse at Mapledurham. This installation exists as a partner piece to the Mantelpiece.

For me, Mantelpiece now represents the loss of home, evoking a sense of transience through discarded objects. A hole blown through a family.

A child's bedroom without walls installed on the grounds in front of a large country estate
2023 saw a 32% increase in the number of people served with ‘no-fault’ eviction notices in England and Wales from this time last year*

For information on homelessness in the Reading Area, check out Launchpad
You can find information on national issues on the Shelter and Crisis websites

map showing the location of domain project

Find us.

Come and contemplate in our collective space.
Open all day every day.

Tilling Courtyard
Weldale Street
Reading
RG1 7BX

#roomwithoutwalls

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