The foundation of leave home stay

Leave Home Stay is an art and reportage project based on, and in, my family home in the English seaside town of Deal in Kent. It was inspired by the deaths, within a year, of both my parents and a return to the modest Victorian house I'd left 35 years before to deal with practicalities. In fact I was faced with unexpected nostalgia, and an only child dilemma: whether to keep the house, or sell it. The indecision to leave - or stay - inspired a return to art, and a series of Arts Council funded public art works, initially for RIBA South East's Architecture Weeks

from 2007-2009.

Each year I have engaged with a variety of media from my professional life as a writer, journalist, broadcaster and photographer, to my academic training as an archaeologist and, not least, the unexpected revival of the art practice I'd left as a teenager, which I revived on the Summer Foundation at the Slade School of Fine Art.

I have used a variety of elements in each installation: family and new photographs, made and found sculpture, home made and broadcast footage, raw audio, soundscape, and other narrative, all highlighting the idea of 'home'. News is a key element: the first year was made as a response to the vagaries of the property market. The latest - Leave Home Stay in Haiti, is a tribute to the dignity and resourcefulness of Haitians living in tented villages after the January earthquake.

About Christine Finn

I am a Channel Island born writer, photographer, and print and broadcast journalist, also making work as a creative archaeologist. I am steered by two main enquiries: what is 'home'? and how does technology relate to art and culture? I travel frequently, but as resourcefully as I can.

for more information see the artists page