The Contemporary Art Society was pleased to have the opportunity to gift Untitled (Dollhouse) to the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool. The Walker Art Gallery is working to strengthen their holdings of contemporary sculpture and Shonibare’s explorations of global issues including colonialism, race, and class have resonance across National Museums Liverpool’s collections. As well as links to the gallery’s historic fine art collections, the Walker Art Gallery also has a collection of 19th century dolls houses drawing links to their decorative art holdings.
The dolls house is an exact replica of the 1872 Victorian town house in the East End of London where Shonibare lives and, as in many of his other works, Dutch wax-print cloth covers miniature furniture in the house. The two-storey house includes miniature cabinets, chairs, tables, fireplaces and a bed, along with reproductions of paintings by Shonibare and Jean-Honore Fragonard.