Jane Lawrence

A Place at the Table: Interiors and the Everyday

ABSTRACT This paper centers on two research-based interior design exhibitions, A Place at the Table: The Politics of Being Inside (2007) and Setting a Place at the Table (2009), at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, University of South Australia (UniSA), Adelaide. These re-presented a citys (Adelaides) civic buildings, plus the surrounding region, through examining interiors as peoples everyday settings. The exhibitions attempted to reveal an alternative means of interpreting and communicating space and place through the ubiquitous element of the table, shown privileged within the interior as a political construct: a nostalgic remembrance and the site of ordinary and extraordinary quotidian experiences. Curated by a team of interior architecture academics from UniSA, the exhibitions incorporated “postproduction” materials and techniques: exhibition content ranged from personal recollections to handmade artifacts and the second exhibition was remade from elements of the first. The exhibitions contributed to an increasing regard for the everyday within the developing interior design discipline and to the challenge of publicly communicating an understanding of the interior through everyday experience.