A Street Loud With Echoes continues South Kiosk’s long-term research project into the pioneering work of architecture critic Ian Nairn whose 1955 edition of Architectural Review revolutionised planning policy in the UK. Exploring post-war migration along the Thames, this final iteration of the project navigates along the river taking in the new towns and developments that epitomised post-war planning in the UK.

The exhibition takes in three areas along the Thames – Canary Wharf, Thamesmead and Basildon. Each provides its own foundation myth, a sense of identity that was constructed through the pencil of the architects and planners of the time who sought to erase old histories and replace them with new ones.

Maeve O’Neill’s large-scale photo collage documents the neoliberal fantasies of Canary Wharf’s architecture while providing a sense of the histories that existed before through its interrogation of the district’s edgelands.

Donald Harding’s installation, The Marshes, unfolds across the sprawling Thamesmead estates planned in the 1960’s to house labourers from the old East End. The work uses a horse breed popular amongst the traveller communities who have settled in the area as a way to explore the erasure of histories brought about by the area’s cycles of economic development.

Shaun C Badham’s work revisits the plotlanders in Essex; a radical DIY community who acquired plots of land through auction after the agricultural depression in the late 19th century. In 1949 Basildon was designated as a New Town; an act that led to the compulsory purchase and demolition of the Dunton Plotlands. Today you can still find bricks in the ground, in the form of foundations, boundary walls, wells and other Plotland remnants. The destruction of the tight-knit Plotland communities cemented the reputation of Basildon as the “town built on tears”. Badham’s work brings together a sculptural reconstruction of a plotland residence alongside a separate installation of bricks forged by ex-Plotland communities in Essex.

A Street Loud With Echoes is accompanied by a publication written and designed by architecture critic Carlos Romo Melgar.

Produced in partnership with The Old Waterworks, Southend-on-Sea, A Street Loud With Echoes also comprises a series of workshops with each of the contributing artists.

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Workshops

Workshop 1: PLOT: Briquette with Shaun C Badham
Date: 05th October 2019 Session One starts at 11:00
Session Two starts at 12:30 Location: The Old Waterworks, Essex Free Tickets : Eventbrite 

In this workshop we’ll be expanding conversations surrounding local issues including building and regional development, displaced communities and DIY living referencing The Plotlander communities in Essex.

In the session, we’ll be forging new bricks by creating briquette’s out of newspaper materials. The use of the briquette as a vehicle for making and conversing is used in reference to the original Plotland communities. The physicality of the briquette itself reminiscent of those bricks still protruding from the ground in Basildon today.

Workshop 2: Essex in the 80’s through film and photography - with Maeve O’Neill
Time: 16th November 2019
11am to 4pm Location: The Old Waterworks, Essex Free Tickets: Eventbrite info@southkiosk.com

This workshop invites participants to bring historical photographs, negatives and printed ephemera of Essex in the 1980s from their personal and family collections to be digitised at The Old Waterworks.

Participants will then use this material to collectively build a large-scale collage installation with artist Maeve O’Neill that encapsulates the vernacular history of 1980s Essex, covering everything from the fashion, architecture, music scenes, activism, local culture, and political climate.

The day will end with a screening of films including Peter Savage’s Tory Stories Parts 1 to 3, Gorilla Tapes’ - Death Valley Days, and more TBC.


Workshop 3: 16mm Black and White Film Workshop with Donald Harding
Time: 7th December
11am to 6pm Location: The Old Waterworks, Essex Free Tickets: Eventbrite info@southkiosk.com

Participants will be led by artist Donald Harding on a walk around the fishing town of Leigh-on-Sea. Drifting through various locations across the seaside town, participants will be given the opportunity to shoot 16mm black and white film on a 1940’s wind-up Bolex camera. On returning to The Old Waterworks, participants will hand process the film which will then be screened alongside a selection of historical films of the local area curated by The White Bus cinema over drinks and snacks.

All supplies and equipment will be provided by the gallery and no prior experience is necessary. This workshop is intended to be an introduction to analogue filming and developing processes, as well as an exploration of collective filmmaking practices.