Not at Home is typical of the small-scale enclosed tableaux made by the South Australian artist Ian Mowbray. Amusing comments on the nineteenth-century tradition of decorative glass paperweights, Mowbray's works also allude to the popular convention of the souvenir 'snow-dome', enclosing a miniature cityscape or cultural icon. Not at Home, however, features a simple domestic interior with a table setting for a solitary diner.

Mowbray fabricates his miniature motifs - often a torso, domestic scene or item of intimate apparel - with the same painstaking attention to detail for which decorative antique paperweights are widely prized. In contrast, though, his tiny tableaux are frequently charged with a sense of social critique. Mowbray treats issues of gender and sexuality, as well as light-hearted variations on the theme of contemporary suburban life.