To Build a Home: Martha Orbach at Glasgow Women's Library Review

By Caroline Metcalf, 06.03.2026

Martha Orbach, Attempt at Home 14 (squawk) (c. unknown). © the artist.

Martha Orbach’s To Build a Home presents interpretations of homemaking in a state of constant change. The works draw on elements of bird nesting and are made from accessible materials, such as string, bank statements and ‘to-do’ lists.

On one side of the exhibition space at Glasgow Women’s Library, multiple attempts at homes are mounted along the wall, clustered in various groups of traditional looking homes, bird nest like imaginings, and more abstract interpretations. A series of prints show Orbach’s thought process around planning some of these works.

Martha Orbach is an artist and mother based in Glasgow who takes inspiration from her Hungarian Jewish heritage, stemming from stories of fleeing and migration passed down from generation to generation. Orbach negotiates with these anxieties in her work and reflects on how being uprooted due to uncontrollable circumstances impact homemaking. This led to her growing up with a knowledge of eco-building, which entails building homes out of materials from the environment such as straw, and shifts away from the modern, conventional definition of what a home is.

The bright exhibition space allows the viewer to intimately view the materials each work is made from. They reflect what Orbach, an artist and mother, may have on hand: from pink string and baby wipes, to a failed funding application. Orbach then mixes these with more traditional art materials such as copper wire or plaster. ‘Attempt at Home #14 (squawk)’ draws on Orbach’s interest in Baba Yaga’s house from Slavic folklore, where the house has two chicken legs. It presents a bridge between the chaotic and homely. Composed partially of dried grass, ‘to-do’ lists, found metal and cotton wool, this home represents a family on the move reusing materials they may have come across.

While some attempts at making a home look like quaint sea-side cottages, others come across as an amalgamation of materials unsuitable to live in, reflecting the psychological influences of Orbach’s view of her own domestic incompetence that she mentions

throughout the exhibition materials. These piles of sticks or strung together household objects with copper wire make one think: ‘That’s not a home!’.

A short stop motion video called ‘Home Movie’ shows the process of making and unmaking, as a home is built up once, then torn apart and rebuilt to be more fortified and comfortable.

There is a common motif across the exhibition of a small, open space indicating an entryway to the home. While each home serves a unique purpose, from hanging nests to homes on stilts, they all offer an invitation inward. An invitation into a secure place to lie down and rest.

To Build a Home by Martha Orbach is exhibited at Glasgow Women’s Library until 28^th March.