Ep 8: Carrie Reichardt: Politics of Permanence

Ian Danger Capstick February 27, 2026

Feature Artist · ~60 min · Season 1

There's a house in west London that you can't miss. Every surface is covered in mosaic: walls, window frames, doorstep, garden walls. It's been there for over twenty years, and it's not going anywhere. That's the point.

The house is called The Treatment Rooms, and it belongs to Carrie Reichardt. She's spent a quarter century turning her home into a monument to the people the system forgot: death row inmates, political prisoners, activists whose names never made the papers. You can't paint over mosaic. You can't peel it off a wall. You'd have to demolish the building. That's what makes it political.

The Treatment Rooms, Carrie Reichardt's mosaic-covered house in west London — The Treatment Rooms, west London. Every surface covered in mosaic. "I'm an artist, your rules don't apply."

"Once mosaic is on a wall, it's part of the architecture. You'd have to knock the building down to remove it. That's the politics of permanence, making something that outlasts the system that tried to silence it."
Carrie Reichardt, Mosaic Artist

Carrie didn't arrive at this practice out of nowhere. There's a lineage that runs through her work, starting with William Morris. In the 1880s, Morris was at the centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He believed that the separation of art from labour was the fundamental crime of industrial capitalism.

"Morris saw something that most people still miss: the reason empires control what gets made and who makes it is because making things is power. If you control craft, you control culture. If you control culture, you control people."
Carrie Reichardt

In 1977, Marshall McLuhan sat for an interview with ABC Australia. The medium is the message. Mosaic works the same way. The message isn't just in the image. The message is in the material itself: permanent, public, embedded in the architecture of daily life. You can't scroll past mosaic. You can't click away from a wall.

Some of Carrie's most powerful work has been made in collaboration with Human Writes, creating mosaic portraits of death row inmates including Luis Ramirez and John Joe Amador, men whose stories would otherwise disappear into the machinery of the American prison system.

Mosaic memorial to Luis Ramirez, Keep the Faith, 1963–2005 — Luis Ramirez, 1963–2005. "Keep the Faith." Cemented permanently into The Treatment Rooms.

All Power to the People mosaic — "All Power to the People," the other side of The Treatment Rooms.

Carrie's work extends far beyond west London. She's created mosaics on four continents, goddesses at Mexican crossroads, memorials in American cities, public art installations across Europe. The punk aesthetic runs through everything she does. She doesn't need gallery permission or arts council approval. She needs a wall, some cement, and something to say.

The Tiki Love Truck, Carrie Reichardt's mosaic-covered vehicle — The Tiki Love Truck. Even the vehicles get the treatment.

"Punk taught me that you don't wait for someone to give you a platform. You make your own. Mosaic is the same. You don't need a gallery. You need a wall and some cement and something to say."
Carrie Reichardt

In an age of disposable content, where stories vanish after twenty-four hours and posts sink beneath the algorithm within minutes, Carrie's practice is a refusal. She makes things that last. The Treatment Rooms will outlast Instagram. The death row portraits will outlast Twitter. That permanence, in a world designed to make everything temporary, is the most radical thing about it.

Mosaic is the opposite of a feed. It doesn't refresh. It just stands there, on the wall, saying the same thing it said the day it was made.