Living in other people's houses
Raquel Ormella

Engaging with the language and forms of political protest, urbanism, and the location and dislocation of communities, Raquel Ormella’s fragile, provisional and transient work was deftly attuned to the critical consideration of the changing character of contemporary urban space. Drawing upon the forms and imagery of street culture, graffiti and propaganda — a kind of urban archaeology which focuses upon public and private memory and the details of lived experience — Ormella’s installation of makeshift and reconstructed architecture, furnishings and banners — the material residues of public and private urban spaces — sought to counter the obliterating processes of ‘renovation’ and ‘urban renewal’ by amplifying that which is overlooked or made redundant by the new global economies of urban renewal and repatriation. Acknowledging the contradictions at the heart of political protest, Ormella’s work has continued to thrive on contradiction. Her interest in transient cultures, and patterns of migration, homelessness and repatriation — also recalls the peripatetic and vulnerable lifestyle familiar to many artists.