Home-Made Europe
Contemporary Folk Artifacts
205x125 mm hardback
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9568962-3-0
£19.95
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Following the critically acclaimed first volume, Vladimir Arkhipov has travelled across Europe to further his collection for this essential second volume. The objects he has found are made by everyday people inspired by the desire to create something themselves rather than buying manufactured goods. The book suggests that many of these utilitarian objects transcend the dictates of necessity, and that this passion for the home-made is not simply a consequence of hard times.
Featured among the 220 idiosyncratic objects are: a ski-bob made using an old bicycle frame from Austria; a titanium table tennis ball case from Russia; and a canoe outrigger constructed out of plumbing pipes from Wales. Other countries include Albania, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Each item is accompanied by a photograph of the creator, their story behind the object, its function, and the materials used to create it.
With a foreword by Jeremy Deller, Turner Prize winner 2004.
Reviews
Vladimir Arkhipov’s new compendium is illustrated with the stuff of trash or treasure, depending on where you’re standing. The Russian artist and collector criss-crossed Europe, tracking down ordinary people who have addressed their basic household needs with extraordinary inventions, often involving parts of other, less essential household objects. Chronicling his discoveries from Albania to Wales, Arkhipov reveals a nautilus machine constructed from a car’s axle and a drawing stool; an heirloom ladle moulded from a melted-down German bomber, and a ski-bob made out of an old bicycle. ‘Many of these objects look like art,’ says Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist who wrote the foreword, ‘but in actual fact art looks like, if not aspires to be like, these objects.’
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