Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, House and Universe is an allegorical series of photographs and sculptural performances that explores material accumulation, supply chains, and personal memory through the lens of mobility and weight. Initiated in 2013, the series features large bundled sculptures (comprised of Mattingly’s own possessions) dragged, floated, and staged in urban and industrial landscapes. These “human-made boulders,” wrapped tightly in twine, are photographed and performed as slow-moving obstructions across iconic trade routes, ports, and bridges.

The work foregrounds consumption and infrastructure as intertwined systems: what we accumulate and discard becomes part of a shared landscape, both physical and psychological. The resulting photographic collages present these actions as speculative monuments (part documentary, part poetic proposal) gesturing toward cycles of extraction, circulation, and disposal.