'Even dust can be interesting': the woman who photographs housework

Clare Gallagher works full-time then comes home to the ‘mind-numbing’ toil of laundry, dishes, cooking and cleaning. So what happened when she started photographing it all?

‘I hate housework!” the American comedian Joan Rivers quipped. “You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.” In her intriguing photobook, The Second Shift, Clare Gallagher places that quote next to an altogether more serious one by the French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who famously compared the repetitive grind of housework to “the torture of Sisyphus”.

Several years in the making and self-published in a limited edition of 500, The Second Shift is an artist’s book that, despite its apparently mundane subject matter, often approaches the sublime. Gallagher captures the familiar workload of family life (piles of laundry, baskets of unironed clothes) as well as the constant creeping chaos that attends it (dirty dishes, food scraps, sinks blocked with slimy domestic detritus).

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The look of Aus: the eucalyptus tree

The Australian icon that thrives both Down Under and in our gardens over here…

Sometimes garden inspiration can come from surprising places. Re-watching David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planetfor the fourth time, I know I should have been wowed by epic aerial shots of kangaroos and wombats on snowy mountain tops, but all I could focus on were the amazing plants. Statuesque alpine snow gums rising out of the cold and ice, with lacy, evergreen canopies swaying in the breeze, were to me something straight out of a sci-fi film. The incongruity of such fresh, green life against the face of all environmental adversity just felt so magical. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about it all is that such rugged origins mean these impossibly exotic trees will be perfectly happy in Old Blighty. In fact, there are few trees that are better suited to increasingly small, urban plots, and yet they still remain inexplicably underused.

The highland home of snow gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora subsp niphophila) has turned a plant whose lowland relatives include some of the tallest trees on Earth into a true dwarf, up to 90% smaller. Reaching a maximum of 10m tall when allowed to grow as an upright standard, it can be further shrunk by cutting out the leader after planting, resulting in a beautiful, multi-stemmed specimen reaching as little as 4m tall. This pruning will also constrict the root growth, improve the character of the tree and prevent it toppling in high winds, so I can’t urge you strongly enough to do this, especially on smaller plots.

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The look of Aus: the eucalyptus tree

The Australian icon that thrives both Down Under and in our gardens over here…

Sometimes garden inspiration can come from surprising places. Re-watching David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planetfor the fourth time, I know I should have been wowed by epic aerial shots of kangaroos and wombats on snowy mountain tops, but all I could focus on were the amazing plants. Statuesque alpine snow gums rising out of the cold and ice, with lacy, evergreen canopies swaying in the breeze, were to me something straight out of a sci-fi film. The incongruity of such fresh, green life against the face of all environmental adversity just felt so magical. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about it all is that such rugged origins mean these impossibly exotic trees will be perfectly happy in Old Blighty. In fact, there are few trees that are better suited to increasingly small, urban plots, and yet they still remain inexplicably underused.

The highland home of snow gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora subsp niphophila) has turned a plant whose lowland relatives include some of the tallest trees on Earth into a true dwarf, up to 90% smaller. Reaching a maximum of 10m tall when allowed to grow as an upright standard, it can be further shrunk by cutting out the leader after planting, resulting in a beautiful, multi-stemmed specimen reaching as little as 4m tall. This pruning will also constrict the root growth, improve the character of the tree and prevent it toppling in high winds, so I can’t urge you strongly enough to do this, especially on smaller plots.

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Plan your plot for 2020: think about seeds and new beds

It’s cold and quiet, but the stirrings of a brighter future are starting

New dawn, new day, new year. Feeling good about it. Things have turned, honestly. Though there is bound to be wind and rain, maybe snow, we will have an hour a day’s more daylight by the end of the month. The sun is moving, but not yet the temperature, though welcome frost will break up heavy soil.

Try to keep off wet ground to avoid compacting it, but think about seed potatoes. This is the month to order your choices and lay them out in trays to chit. First earlies should be ready for planting in mid-March in warmer areas, but leave it until later where it is cooler. Look out for nearby potato fairs (potato-days.net) where you can also buy onion sets and shallots for planting in the coming months. Reacquaint yourself with a good garden centre.

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Plan your plot for 2020: think about seeds and new beds

It’s cold and quiet, but the stirrings of a brighter future are starting

New dawn, new day, new year. Feeling good about it. Things have turned, honestly. Though there is bound to be wind and rain, maybe snow, we will have an hour a day’s more daylight by the end of the month. The sun is moving, but not yet the temperature, though welcome frost will break up heavy soil.

Try to keep off wet ground to avoid compacting it, but think about seed potatoes. This is the month to order your choices and lay them out in trays to chit. First earlies should be ready for planting in mid-March in warmer areas, but leave it until later where it is cooler. Look out for nearby potato fairs (potato-days.net) where you can also buy onion sets and shallots for planting in the coming months. Reacquaint yourself with a good garden centre.

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How much value does an extra bathroom add? Nottingham Estate Agents

Gone are the days when family members were happy to take their turn in the bathroom. Make no mistake: a house with two bathrooms trumps a home with just one. In the shopping list of building works that can add significant value to a property – from conservatories to loft conversions to new kitchens – […]

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Excess all areas: inside the home of Rockett St George's founder

A designer’s impulsive and quirky approach to interiors means her London home is packed with interest

Every room in Lucy St George’s north London home is a different size and shape. This suits the designer perfectly, because she’s “always been a fan of the one-off and the quirky”. St George’s love of the offbeat is the reason she co-founded Rockett St George with business partner Jane Rockett, in 2007. Since then the homewares brand has acquired a reputation for witty pieces – flamingo-legged lamps, hand-shaped chairs – inspired by their vintage finds. “We’ve always sold things we like: eccentric designs with personality.”

The home she shares with her two daughters feels out of the ordinary, too. Outside, it’s a standard Edwardian terraced house: brick-fronted and bay-windowed, with stained-glass panels glowing in the wide front door. Inside, the look is Studio 54 with a bit of fin de siècle excess. Surfaces gleam with gold and silver. Classical sculptures lurk among the waxy houseplants. A disco ball scatters sunbeams across the ceiling – like a blingy Jackson Pollock – in the afternoon: “We call it disco o’clock.”

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