‘Yesterday I got another rejection from an Open Call, and this time it stung. I have had so many rejections this year I’ve lost count. Working, working, and then submitting to Open Call’s and getting the notification, the ‘unfortunately’ response. But how else to show the work, other than the merry-go-round of Instagram? Family life is demanding, and I must admit I’m tired. I need to feel excitement outside of this process of submitting and posting.
And if I stopped, what form would the work take? Something otherworldly?‘
(Artist journal entry, 11/08/2025)
As an artist whose objective is for my research to be practice-based, my focus will be on artists and writers who have discussed the complexities of domesticity. Through frustration with the process of applying to Open Calls, funding and submissions, I have begun to look at artists who have utilized their domestic space as part of a holistic practice of experience, exhibition and record. In adherence to ideas concerning the personal as political, private versus public and a desire to adopt a more empowering process.
‘To lose oneself,’ is a mental state often referred to in the days to early parenthood, when one is sleep deprived and in the trenches. Virginia Woolf has written of the nuances of getting lost for women, how if one is housebound, it can manifest as a solitary space of working with the hands. I would also like to consider the role of the artists’ internal landscape and how they have used this to facilitate the creation of external ideas and objects.
When Delving into an artists work never underestimate the power of seeking out their home and surroundings. While it might be a ‘domestic’ space, it can also be a portrait of someone’s interior mind.
Katy Hessel, The Guardian (4th June 2025)
Open Call Clown, drawing by my son Eden aged 5
NIKKI FOSTER 