(An alternative history for Water House and the lost arts of Walter De Sney)
September 18th - October 9th, 2007
at the William Morris Gallery, LLoyd Park, Forest Rd, Walthamstow
Here is a link to view a map of how to get there: Location
Open Evening reception Tuesday 9th October, 6-8pm
From 18 September, the William Morris Gallery will be the venue for Making ‘Nowhere’ Somewhere, an exhibition of newly completed artworks and selected items from the Gallery's archives by Walthamstow artist Mark Hampson. Mark is Senior Tutor in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art and has held acclaimed exhibitions of his work in London, New York, Tokyo, Stockholm and elsewhere.
The exhibition celebrates Mark's year-long project as the Gallery's Associate Artist, and brings to a conclusion the research he has undertaken with the Gallery's archives and collections. The result of this association is a series of fantastical narrative artworks utilizing textiles, photography, model-making, painting and print in response to ideas inspired by the Gallery's contents, and by the building that houses them – the former Water House (now William Morris Gallery).
In particular, he has been motivated by a period in the house's history, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when it was briefly rented by an American gentleman who had the rather advanced idea of turning the surrounding area into a Country Park or pleasure gardens, to which he could charge admission. The facts of this little known and scarcely documented event have become the starting point for a stream of narrative fictions that explore what might have happened at this Country Park, and what effects it might have had on the area both then and today. The exhibition is light-hearted and satirical, and has definite contemporary resonances.
In Mark’s hands, Water House and Lloyd Park become ‘Nowhere’, a flawed fantasy Utopian Theme Park inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and, specifically, by images of William Morris himself, where pleasure and leisure are promoted and pursued. But this is not the Nowhere of Morris's famous novel News from Nowhere ….
At the exhibition's imagined ‘Nowhere’, elephants graze and bearded clowns perform, busy city gents pay to dress as bucolic farmers and lean on gate-posts to de-stress, while other visitors ride carousels in the adjacent fairground or row boats around the park's moated lake.
To portray this, Mark has created mock historical artworks – faux Victorian leisure-based artefacts – and has invented documentary evidence of life in the park that exploits imaginative conjecture whilst parodying the conventions and authority of museum display. These will be shown interspersed by works from the Gallery collection that have inspired his thinking and influenced his choices of imagery.
Many of the artworks have been produced via collaboration, often tapping into the wealth of local talents, skills and resources in the Walthamstow community (echoing both Morris's own collaborative ventures and the Arts & Crafts Movement). Working closely with other artists, local residents, shops and businesses, he has created images that re-imagine and re-invent our collective local history and heritage.