What makes a house a home? The physical accommodation is merely a shell, becoming a home only with belongings and associated memories. When we move house we box up our lives. We leave the shell empty for future occupiers to fill, thus allowing a seemless handover.
Not To Go are the words printed on stickers, used by removal companies so they know what to take and what to leave. Jonty Tacons current house was the previous owners’ home for 45 years. He knew they found moving on incredibly hard and were surprised how many items they left behind. Some items were stickered Not To Go, countless more just simply abandoned. As such, when he and his family moved in, there was a sense of sadness and of lives overlapping; a distinct feeling that they were in another family’s home with glimpses of lives and family history they barely had the first idea about. This work set out to document the poignancy that the previous owners left through their abandoned belongings.