A London artist who is recreating his tiny flat in still life paintings has described his work as “anti-Instagram, anti-perfection”.
Rod Kitson, 42, lives in a studio flat in south-east London, and has been painting every inch of his home on 1ftx1ft MDF squares, giving people a unique insight into the intimate realities of home, and hopes to one day display the finished piece as a “kind of Turner Prize thing, Tate Gallery thing”.
Rod, who has been working on his project since February, has completed around 200 pieces and documented his entire kitchen.
However, he estimates the whole project will contain 800 squares, and believes it will take another two years to complete.
The undertaking has led Rod, who has been a full-time artist for a decade, to some surprising reflections about his home and how lifestyles are displayed in the age of social media.
“I’ve come to really appreciate my home. It’s only small, but I really love it,” he told PA Real Life.
“I think showing it to everyone has made me appreciate how lucky I am to have somewhere to come home to and to feel comfortable in.”
Often, when we are shown the interiors of people’s homes on social media, we see a manicured perfection. No dirty dishes, no clothes strewn over a chair, no shoes piled up by the front door. In Rod’s work, however, we see his home exactly as he does whenever he comes to paint a section of it, in a move he describes as “anti-Instagram, anti-perfection”.
“The more personal I get, and the more naked I become, the more open I become about the way I live, the more people respond to it, which is totally counter-intuitive,” he reflects, adding that he has gathered a near-100,000-strong following across his Instagram and TikTok accounts, both @rodkitsonart.
“Perhaps people are sick of seeing these manicured lifestyles, manicured personas. People manicure their personas, don’t they? And the way they live, to present a version of themselves which they think is socially acceptable or they think is going to validate them the most. I think people are tired of it.”
“What it’s showing me is that people don’t judge, people haven’t been judgmental on things,” he added.
“I’ve felt like it’s a small place. And I thought there’s lots of little things, like my little cooker and that kind of stuff, which I might have been kind of reluctant to show people, because I’m not living in a giant place, and I might have thought that this wasn’t somewhere I should be in terms of my age and my life journey.”
“I should have a proper cooker by now, I should have a proper house, and I should have a garage, and I should have all these things. But it’s shown me that people don’t judge, people are just interested in the way other people live.”
As the project takes shape, Rod has been thinking about what he’d like it to represent, how he’d like it to be displayed once it’s ready.
He has been considering how works like Tracey Emin’s sculpture My Bed – a 1998 installation shown at the Tate Gallery, which displayed her bed in a dishevelled, lived-in state – have resonated with people thanks to their vulnerability and exhibition of imperfection.
His dream is for the piece to be displayed as a life-size recreation of his flat that people can enter and explore as they would a real home.
“The home has always been of interest to people. You look back at things that resonate and, funnily enough, it is often those personal elements of home,” Rod said.
However, he has found himself going beyond realism into surrealism and imagination, incorporating invented elements into his paintings.
“I’ve started to imagine what’s going on inside the walls, inside the cupboards,” he said.
“I’ve actually imagined a family of rats in the alcove of the wall, which I’m not sure if my landlord will be that happy about. I’m not saying there are, but I’ve imagined a little family of rats inside the recess of the wall.
“Inside of my chest of drawers, I’ve imagined there’s a little baby sleeping in there. I suppose it’s a little self-portrait, really.”
Because Rod rents his home, there is the ever-looming anxiety that he might be forced to move out before he can finish the project.
The London rental market is famously unstable, with rising rents forcing moves and properties being redeveloped all the time, and he simply hopes he can stay put long enough to finish the work.
“I sort of worry that I won’t be able to ever come up with a better idea or better concept than this,” he says.
“My concern is that I have to move out before I can finish this odyssey.”