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Lot Essay
Rendered on a dazzling, immersive scale, The Puppeteer is a majestic canvas from Caroline Walker’s seminal series In Every Dream Home. Described by curator Jane Neal at the time as 'one of her most important works to date', it depicts three women in a sparkling, sunlit atrium, arranged in a surreal pageant (J. Neal, In Every Dream Home, Wakefield 2013, p. 13). One, holding a pink rubber ring, looks in from the outside; another playfully pulls at the straps on her companion’s blue bathing suit, elongating them like puppet strings. Walker orchestrates a virtuosic dance of light and shadow, which streams through the glass walls, bounces off the glistening swimming pool and floods the reflective surface of the glossy kitchen island. Executed in 2013, the series represents a major early milestone in Walker’s exploration of women, and the often unseen roles they play. Taking its title from the 1973 song ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’ by Roxy Music, it proposes that seemingly picture-perfect domestic lives are not always what they seem. Here, aspiration, affection and domestic bliss are held in tension with glimmers of jealousy, power-play and melancholic longing. Laced with narrative ambiguity and near-cinematic suspense, it is a powerful instance of the evocative human observations that set Walker’s career in motion.
In Every Dream Home formed the subject of Walker’s first institutional solo exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, London. She stands today as one of the leading British figurative painters of her generation, with recent major presentations at the Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, KM21, The Hague, Fitzrovia Chapel, London and Nottingham Castle. In Every Dream Home, notably, cemented the dialogue between architecture and the human figure that lies at the heart of her practice. ‘I’d been exploring the notion of the “Grand Design” house and became interested in the idea of dream homes, and what might go on in them’, she explained, noting that Pitzhanger Manor itself had originally been conceived as something of an idealised dwelling for the celebrated Regency architect Sir John Soane (C. Walker, quoted in D. Woodward, ‘Caroline Walker: In Every Dream Home’, AnOther Magazine, 19 July 2013). In the present work, the sharp geometries of the building and patio exist in complex counterpoint with the figures, shrubbery and their hazy reflections, plunging the entire composition into a liminal, dreamlike state.
Inspired by David Hockney’s swimming pool paintings and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, Walker relishes the frissons of voyeurism and unspoken desire in her work. Staged with costumes, props and models, In Every Dream Home plays with these tensions, subtly negotiating the line between theatre and reality. Walker’s protagonists are often presented as idealised cut-outs—‘puppets’, perhaps—their real emotions buried deep beneath their smiles. In the present work, the three women have their backs turned to one another, and seem to exist in their own worlds. The painting marks one of Walker's first depictions of this recurring trio of characters, representing a take on the pagan idea of the ‘Triple Goddess’. Are the older women directing the fates of their younger counterparts? Or are they in fact all the same woman, represented at different stages of her life simultaneously? Clusters of fruit punctuate the scene like pockets of surreal still life: oranges, writes Neal, stand among Walker's favourite motifs, famously standing as symbols of chastity, love and temptation in Renaissance painting. As a parallel world unfurls beneath the drama in the kitchen counter, the narrative is doubled and distorted yet again. We are left, like the figure with the inflatable ring, on the outside, watching a play we will never truly understand.
In Every Dream Home formed the subject of Walker’s first institutional solo exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, London. She stands today as one of the leading British figurative painters of her generation, with recent major presentations at the Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, KM21, The Hague, Fitzrovia Chapel, London and Nottingham Castle. In Every Dream Home, notably, cemented the dialogue between architecture and the human figure that lies at the heart of her practice. ‘I’d been exploring the notion of the “Grand Design” house and became interested in the idea of dream homes, and what might go on in them’, she explained, noting that Pitzhanger Manor itself had originally been conceived as something of an idealised dwelling for the celebrated Regency architect Sir John Soane (C. Walker, quoted in D. Woodward, ‘Caroline Walker: In Every Dream Home’, AnOther Magazine, 19 July 2013). In the present work, the sharp geometries of the building and patio exist in complex counterpoint with the figures, shrubbery and their hazy reflections, plunging the entire composition into a liminal, dreamlike state.
Inspired by David Hockney’s swimming pool paintings and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, Walker relishes the frissons of voyeurism and unspoken desire in her work. Staged with costumes, props and models, In Every Dream Home plays with these tensions, subtly negotiating the line between theatre and reality. Walker’s protagonists are often presented as idealised cut-outs—‘puppets’, perhaps—their real emotions buried deep beneath their smiles. In the present work, the three women have their backs turned to one another, and seem to exist in their own worlds. The painting marks one of Walker's first depictions of this recurring trio of characters, representing a take on the pagan idea of the ‘Triple Goddess’. Are the older women directing the fates of their younger counterparts? Or are they in fact all the same woman, represented at different stages of her life simultaneously? Clusters of fruit punctuate the scene like pockets of surreal still life: oranges, writes Neal, stand among Walker's favourite motifs, famously standing as symbols of chastity, love and temptation in Renaissance painting. As a parallel world unfurls beneath the drama in the kitchen counter, the narrative is doubled and distorted yet again. We are left, like the figure with the inflatable ring, on the outside, watching a play we will never truly understand.