James McQueen My Castle My Rules For Sale

About this work

My Castle My Rules is a mixed-media work on paper measuring 95 × 125 cm, in which James McQueen takes a phrase of domestic sovereignty and domestic humour — the claim of absolute authority within one's own home — and renders it as art. The phrase carries a warmth and familiarity that is entirely characteristic of McQueen's practice: these are the words people actually speak, the declarations they make with a mixture of genuine conviction and self-aware comedy. McQueen's mixed-media approach on paper builds a surface of considerable tactile interest — layered, worked, and evidently made with care. The choice of paper as ground gives the work an intimacy and immediacy appropriate to a phrase about the private domain, the home as the space where one's own rules apply. At 95 × 125 cm, the work is substantial enough to command a wall while remaining within the scale of something personal and owned. My Castle My Rules joins a distinguished body of McQueen works that find their subject matter in the phrases by which people assert themselves — with humour, with pride, and with the particular combination of sincerity and irony that marks the best of his practice. This work speaks directly to anyone who has ever retreated to the domestic space as a place of refuge, rule-setting, and self-determination — which is to say, to everyone.