Take a giant housing estate ready for demolition, invite some artists to meet the people that lived there and their memories, then fix a time and date and create something artistically connected to it. A one-day event shedding a new life to what before was the theater of lives, crimes, graffiti, vandalism and youth gangs.
The Market Estate was a public housing estate constructed in 1967 and consisting of 271 flats and maisonettes situated to the north of Caledonian Park, London.
From the late 50s through to the early 70s, London saw the creation of an enormous quantity of housing estates. These estates were perceived as a place where communities would prosper or, rather more negatively, as a way to give cheap houses to an ever-expanding population.
The entire estate was demolished two weeks ago following a plan of renovation to stop the decline of the building and to diffuse crime rates in the area. The Project is produced and curated by TallTales; a London based practice exploring creative opportunities in urban regeneration. They decided to invite a huge number of artists coming from different disciplines to freely express and immerse themselves in a one-day event before the bulldozing operation would commence on the building. On the 6th of March 65 artists developed a brand new, site-specific project in 21 vacant flats, including the corridors, staircase and communal spaces. The artworks visible and exhibited on the event day had the taste of the place, full of memories bearing an art deco, seventies’ carpet smell. A varied crowd of curious visitors from two local communities were hectically going up and down, in and out, granted with a few hours access to someone else’s life and past. Every corner taken by the project was twisted and altered with by concepts of humanity, aesthetic, memories, and above all time and finally, destruction. All the artwork was destroyed together with the Market Estate specifically created for its ultimate ending. Thus, giving us the opportunity to reflect about the ephemeral state of life and things that surround us.
Amelia’s interviewed the artist Andere Monjo who took over the space of flat 24 to create an installation about feelings, sensations and textiles.
What was your artwork for the market estate project? Our piece was an installation in flat 24. The aim of our project was to get each visitor to relate intimately with the space. The center of the installation was a TV displaying a film recoded in the same room, showing our personal moments of ‘aloneness’ as metaphor of instants in everyone’s daily life, where one finds the connection with the inner self.
The connection with the place and the local communities was a fundamental point to get involved in the project. How did you express it in your work? Evoking the idea that intimacy had happened before in this abandoned room.
How did you engage with an apartment full of someone else’s memories as exhibition space? We found flat 24 by accident while visiting the Estate and instinctually connected to the energy of the space. We decided to leave the flat as we found it: no furniture, faded curtains and ripped wallpaper, signs of previous lives.
The exhibition was a one-day event where all the art works were ending their physical life together with the building destruction. How did you relate your practice with this side of the project? Did you take it as a point of strength or weakness for your personal expression? The ephemeral nature of the Market Estate Project made it a special and unique scenario. The film, part of the installation, will remain as a memory of that moment.
www.marketestateproject.com
http://marketestateproject.com/blog/
Categories ,andere monjo, ,market housing estate, ,textiles, ,urban regeneration
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