Exhibition
Review Edifying pictures of a thousand words
Art can and should be in the streets, where people live and work, writes JOHN GREEN about this inspiring exhibition
“I come to this Road and I feel free. I can be myself.” (quote/pictured Naomi) Photo: Don Travis
Exhibition Ridley Road Stories (Part 1)
Future Hackney
futurehackney.com/exhibition
Ridley Road in the heart of the London’s borough of Hackney is renowned as an iconic market. On most days it is crowded with tradespeople and shoppers.
Over the years it has come to represent the rapidly changing face of London street life, its multiculturalism and changing demographic.
Above all it is a place brimming with energy, colour and the richness of human life. All these aspects are beautifully captured in this significant exhibition.
In Ridley Road Stories (Part 1), Future Hackney is presenting the first local public photography exhibition documenting and celebrating the life of the road and its mainly working-class inhabitants.
Donna Travis of Future Hackney explains: “Ridley Road Stories is a documentary story of a Hackney Street with a rich history of Caribbean and African Culture.
“Future Hackney has been capturing this dynamic space over the last three years as a living archive. We increasingly recognise public art as the new ‘gallery’ so this just seemed the perfect way to introduce the project especially with the resonance locally of the iconic Red Cross building and with the Black Lives Matter movement.”
This initiative takes cognisance of the fact that our whole understanding of art — where and how it is exhibited — has been transformed, just as our societies have changed.
Art can and should be in the streets, where people live and work; they should not only see their lives reflected and feel part of the artworks but also become involved in creating their own artworks.
Future Hackney’s has worked with local photographers and filmmakers, often young people, to chronicle life in east London’s rapidly changing spaces, working intensively over the last three years. This long-term project documents social change in east London.
Local visual storytellers have been working alongside young people and residents to create a living archive of inner-city life. Through representing these communities and establishing their cultural and historical spaces, FH aims to highlight the relevance of London’s multicultural legacy.
A cornerstone of FH’s work is also the development of up-and-coming talent, and that is evident in two of the young Londoners involved in Ridley Road Stories. Brunel Johnson was one of the winners in the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain 2020 contest for Black Dreams Matter. Johnson was guided and funded by FH as he worked on Ridley Road Stories, and the collective is now helping him promote his documentary projects.
Donna Travis hopes that “the exhibition will give Londoners a reminder of how beautiful, diverse and dynamic our inner-city communities are. “The aim is to highlight the historical and cultural relevance of the road and how this supports the Black Lives Matter movement across the city, and, more generally, the importance of migrant and multicultural communities that have invested in the borough since the 1960s.
“Ridley Road is a community that is vibrant but at the same time vulnerable, and we hope to give people a fresh look at its visual and cultural power,” she adds.
The exhibition has been installed on the wall of the large Red Cross building in the borough.
Exhibition runs from November 6 2020. Red Cross, 92 Dalston Lane, London E8 1NG. The exhibition is free and safe for social distancing. Supported by the Red Cross, Ridley Road Market, and Hackney Film Office. Working alongside local photographers, residents, traders and youth, this is a collaborative project funded by the National Lottery and Arts Council England.