Broken Homes - Andrew Mackenzie

better late than never right?

the review by Andrew Mackenzie on Callum Morton's 2007 Venice Biennale work "Valhalla" focuses on the implications of the architectural structures constructed in contemporary society and their internatilised and private nature. After losely Acknowledging the works connection to the ruins and battlefields of modern warfare Mackenzie moves to the work's deeper meanings about "a battlefield in which the everyday drama of thwarted domesticity plays out" the home. Mackenzie links this concept of domestic unsettlement with the location in which the work is installed, "in the quasi public domain" somewhere between the public and private. This literal representation of the metaphorical battlefield brings in the views and works of Mary Jane Jacobs "the death and life of great american cities" in which Jacobs discusses the internalisation of semi-private functions "children playing" or "friends story telling" causing urban social decline and alienation. emulated in Morton's work by the decrepit nature of the house covered in scorch marks, bullet holes and graffiti.

Mackenzie stresses the importance that this is not a biographical work and while the house is modeled on the artist's demolished childhood home it is more a metaphor for social convention as a whole and the privatisation of social structures and interactions. Mackenzie then discusses the final product of the privatised and internal architectural structures in the form of Dubai's extravagant luxury accommodations. with this we see entire islands gated off for private use.
the review then discusses the decline of modernist aesthetics and architecture as it is distorted by contemporary estate agencies.

the review by Andrew Mackenzie is an insightful view into the multilayered meanings of Callum Morton's "Valhalla" and the distinction between social behavior in private and public spacial architecture