Magnolia Dreams

Magnolia Dreams is an evolving installation project exploring the UK housing crisis through lived experience, frustration, and dark humour. Drawing from years spent in social housing and HMO/rented accommodation in Southampton, the work confronts the bureaucratic absurdities and everyday indignities of renting in Britain today.

The contractor becomes a central figure within a growing cast of landlords, estate agents, and repairmen who only ever "answer to the boss." His belongings occupy a makeshift house, rather than a home, a space held in perpetual transition, echoing systems that remain forever unfinished, unregulated, and unresolved.

The jeans, designed by stylist Marilena Angelides, hang as a symbol within the space, evidence of a man who has made himself at home but left the work unfinished.

Through satire and discomfort, Magnolia Dreams exposes the imbalance of power between tenant and property, people and land, in a country where stability is promised in magnolia paint, disguise, and delay. This installation forms the first part of a larger narrative that will continue to shift, expand, and expose.