The Whitworth in Manchester will host Bobby Baker’s radical sculptural installation ‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’.
Originally created in her prefabricated East London house in 1976, the remake of this installation accompanies ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ opening simultaneously.
This major artwork contains five life-size sculptures of family members made from cake, biscuits and meringues, which will be steadily eaten by the public.
This installation is possible thanks to public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Baker had not been seen for almost 50 years until the first restaging of a replica in 2023 outside Tate Britain, with updated elements by the artist. The 1976 installation was presented in Baker’s actual prefabricated mobile home – one of a handful of prefabs that arts organisation Acme were providing for artists as live/work spaces.
Alongside the refurbished dressmaker’s dummy mother, the figures of a daughter, son, husband, and baby will be made out of garibaldi biscuits, meringue, and various flavours of cake (including a vegan option). The house is papered floor-to-ceiling in newspaper pages and magazine clippings dated to the mid-Seventies adorned with icing decorations. In the bathroom, music from the era emanates from a vintage radio and in the sitting room, the father watches 1970s comedy on TV.
Baker originally staged her installation at the age of 25 over the course of a week in 1976 in her prefab Acme house in Stepney, East London. Visitors ate pieces of her cake ‘family’ and Baker served cups of tea, performing the role of ‘polite female host’.
In the living room, a father made of fruit cake was slumped in an armchair surrounded by tabloid newspapers; in the bath, a teenage son made of garibaldi biscuits lay in chocolate cake bathwater against a background of comics; and in the kitchen, a mother constructed from a dressmaker’s mannequin with a teapot for a head offered a constant supply of fairy cakes, sandwiches and fruit from compartments in her hollow abdomen. Baker baked, sculpted and decorated each of these family members herself over the course of a month.
The cake will be baked by Manchester’s women-owned and women-run Long Boi’s Bakehouse and assembled by Bobby Baker and her team. Visitors to the Whitworth will be invited into the house to sample these edible sculptures and talk to the ‘hosts’ and ‘host mother’ – students selected from The University of Manchester and trained by Baker herself.
Bobby Baker said: “Originally I wasn’t overtly considering the work as ‘feminist’, however over the years – and having had children and now grandchildren, I have come to realise that unpaid domestic labour is an incredibly undervalued part of life. It is fundamental to how the human world operates – how we look after each other and care for our children and stay healthy. However, domesticity and the work it requires still have words like ‘menial’ attached to it. In 1976 when people came to see Edible Family in what was my actual mobile home, they could contemplate who plays what domestic roles and why – and restaging this now, I feel that this work is still very much relevant today.”
The accompanying exhibition ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ features over 100 women artists and celebrates their often-unsung contribution to British culture. It includes photographs of Baker’s original sculptural installation from 1976.
recreate her work, Baker conducted a period of research with UCL’s Institute of Making – a multidisciplinary research club for students and staff where she developed specialist icing to decorate the walls of the house. The building’s structure was also adapted to improve accessibility.
The Manchester presentation is enabling the production of a new editioned artist film by Bobby Baker and Hugo Glendinning that ensures the work has a legacy beyond 2025.
‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’ is free to visit and opens at the Whitworth, Manchester on 7 March 2025 until 20 April. For more information visit www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/ ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ is open from 7 March to 1 June.
Please note that an ‘Edible Family in a Mobile Home’ opening times are Wednesdays: 10.30am–4pm, Thursdays: 2pm–8pm, Fridays: 10.30am–4pm, Saturdays: 10.30am–4pm, Sundays: 10.30am–4pm.
