Frontroom

living room

TV room

drawing room

sitting room

reception room

lounge

family room

Front room…

–noun

a room at the front of a house, esp. a parlour

The dictionary definition of a front room doesn’t really do it justice. In its most literal sense a front room is exactly ^^ that; but this fails to touch upon the role that such a front room plays in the day-to-day happenings of pretty much every home that I have been lucky enough to sip a cup of tea inside. Cul-de-sac to high street, tower block to bungalow, basement digs to penthouse pads - the life and times of every home that I have lived in revolve around the front room.

Take today, for example. I could not wait to get home and sit in my front room after being forced (begrudgingly) to visit Hackney Farm and Columbia road flower market. On returning home I stretched out and didn’t leave my front room for the rest of the day. I sat and ate dinner in it (3pm), I also ate desert in it (3:20pm), I spoke to my friends on the phone in it and told them that I was not leaving it to meet them somewhere other than it (but if they cared to leave theirs and come sit in mine then they were more than welcome). I watched trashy television in it (6-8pm), listened to music in it (8-10pm) and am currently watching Alien 3 (11:45pm - present) in it too. I am also well aware that my neighbours are currently having a massive party in their house, next door due to the booming music that has been rattling the walls for the past 3+ hours, of which their front room is almost certainly the epicentre of said revelries.

When someone, somewhere dollied out the staple ‘living’ activities to specific spaces within an ordinary home, back in Pompeii or somewhere similar; the function of the front room must have felt like a bit of a luxury. It is a space that welcomes procrastination. If you’re not sat about in your front room (or sleeping in your bedroom) then you are most likely in another room doing something far more productive.

As a result, the compulsion to create doesn’t often resonate within such a space, for the simple fact that the compulsion to create is overpowered by the desire to recline, chew the fat, take a nap or watch the tube.

And who would want it any other way?

What I find most interesting about the function of a front room is just how uncontested it feels. In a world where re-evaluating the form and function of pretty much everything has become such standard practice, especially the things that define everyday living, I find it amazing that the function of the front room has remained so unchallenged, so preserved in time. Sure, 3-D visuals, 720” plasma-screens and surround-sound-cinema-total-immersion-video-games have attempted to infiltrate and take over the space, however, the primary function of our beloved front room remains…

…and maybe this is why what The District are doing with theirs is so beautiful.

In the Gatehouse on Gwydir Street, Cambridge, The District invites artists to produce and present work in their front room. As the traditional living quarters of the now District offices, The Frontroom plays host to a calender of creative happenings that go a long way to redefining the traditional associations of the much loved 'room at the front of the house’.

The District team may not physically live in the Gatehouse, their toothbrushes are elsewhere, but someone certainly used to, and this plays a significant part in how the invited artists interpret the space. For example, rather than turning up a couple of days before the private view and sticking a bunch of paintings on the walls, artists are required to 'live’ in it for at least a week (but anything up to a month) in order to produce the work in-house.

The residential nature of this creative process produces exciting results, namely in the artists forming a pretty unique relationship with their surroundings, while also guaranteeing that all work displayed is both brand new and exclusive. It is not uncommon for the work, the walls, the floor and sometimes even the ceiling to become one. In this respect, the Frontroom brings out the installation artist in everyone who exhibits there.

So what are you waiting for?

Go

and

ring

the

doorbell.