Work in Progress

A Gift from Artist Bobby Baker

“The whole of my life’s work stems from an early feeling of injustice, lack of opportunity and the undervaluing of care work [...] Society still doesn’t adequately support families, parents, or domestic labour and yet work and childcare are fundamental to survival and humanity” – Bobby Baker, interviewed in the Guardian, 19 Oct 2023

 Bobby Baker created An Edible Family in a Mobile Home in 1976 at the age of 25. She sculpted a life-size ‘family’ from cake, and installed them in the prefab home she was living in. Bobby served cups of tea to visitors who were invited to eat and thereby dismantle her edible family.

In 2023, the work was radically restaged. Every detail – from the newsprint lining the walls to the fabrication of a replica of the original post-war prefab building – was recreated. Despite that the work hasn't been seen for 50 years, the societal injustices that Baker was responding to are as present today and her work remains as relevant as ever. 

Edible Family is touring from Tate Britain in London, to the Whitworth in Manchester, before being presented by Idle Women in Lancashire. Following this final staging, Bobby has gifted the prefab to Idle Women to be repurposed as our first permanent building and a legacy space, sited by our sisterhood somewhere in Lancashire, not far from the M65 like all our other spaces.

“When the possibility of remaking An Edible Family got closer I didn’t want it to end up in a sculpture park, it’s got to be used for women living now. I wrote to Idle Women and asked whether they would be interested in taking it. They immediately replied to say “Yes, we would!” I cried with the excitement of it, that this house could go from Stepney to be recreated in the heart of the establishment at Tate Britain, near to the Houses of Parliament and MI6, and onto Manchester with its history of industrialisation, women’s liberation, and suffragettes. And then it ends up in Lancashire with Idle Women. It could be a social centre, it could be for arts, but it’s a little permanent building for them, which they don’t currently have. Why would you ethically spend that much money if it didn’t have that kind of journey?” – Bobby Baker in conversation with Daily Life Ltd. Associate Curator, Gemma Lloyd from the Tate exhibition leaflet

Bobby Baker © Tate. Photograph: Madeleine Buddo

Bobby Baker's An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976, 2023) is free to visit at Tate Britain for the first four weeks of the Women in Revolt! exhibition (8 November – 3 December 2023) and again for the final four weeks of the exhibition (8 March – 7 April 2024). More information on its subsequent tour coming soon.

One of the most audaciously brilliant exhibits is outside on Tate Britain’s lawn, where you can literally eat the patriarchy in Bobby Baker’s reconstruction of her legendary 1976 An Edible Family in a Mobile Home. – Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper, 22 November 2023

Bobby Baker's An Edible Family in a Mobile Home is presented by Daily Life Ltd. in partnership with Tate, the Whitworth and Idle Women and is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. ​