Exhibition: Teenage Bedrooms: 'like a house inside of a house'

This small display steps into the homes of 26 London teenagers to explore the meaning and significance of contemporary teenage bedrooms.

A combination of photographs, interviews, objects and an installation representing a teenager’s bedroom, will show how identity, memory and friendship are expressed within these private spaces.

Most of the teenagers interviewed see their rooms as a close reflection of their own individuality, changing as they change. Within the family home the teenage bedroom appears an intimate canvas and a space apart, described by one participant as “like a house inside of a house”.

While the bedrooms are very different, there are also common themes. Teenagers find many ways to bring the outside world into these spaces and their walls evidence their cultural and emotional lives beyond the home. But the rooms are also a rich personal archive that commemorates childhood and family history, providing continuity with the past.

Teenagers’ parents were also interviewed and reflect on differences between their own remembered teenage bedrooms and those of their children, able to retreat to their rooms to talk to friends on social media, rather than brave the phone in the hall. In present-day rooms, the mobile by the pillow or the laptop on the duvet is a recurrent sight, and the bed, often a double, is an island of comfort from which to connect and communicate. At the same time, some teenagers find special appeal in the tangibility of earlier, non-digital forms of communication, such as letters and vinyl records.