About The Thamesmead Chapter
These fibre-based silver gelatin prints, created on traditional black-and-white photographic paper, have been manually developed using a unique method. This process transforms the unexposed silver in the paper—the highlights of the image—into a reflective silver mirror.
I create these paper silver mirrors to echo my personal experience of living in Thamesmead—an introspective and self-reflective journey. The technique invites viewers to encounter their own reflection within the photographs, drawing a parallel with my experience of living in the area. Bringing the silver nitrate layer already embedded in the photographic paper to the surface also mimics a hallmark of brutalist architecture: the exposure of raw materials.
About The Thamesmead Chapter comprises high-contrast landscape and sometimes abstract photographs that explore labyrinthine urbanism devoid of human presence. These images depict my time living in Thamesmead (2018–2024) and address broader issues such as marginalisation, housing, and the complexities of community-building.
I moved to Thamesmead in 2018 as part of a redevelopment scheme inviting 40 artists to reside in the area. In exchange for affordable housing, we were encouraged to contribute to the creation of a more cohesive local community through active participation in forums, workshops, festivals, and other art and community initiatives. However, the work-oriented urbanism of the area—with its lack of cafés, cinemas, theatres, and other social spaces—alongside a local history of marginalisation and social exclusion, and the instrumentalisation of community-building for property revalorisation by the housing company, complicated this endeavour.
This series includes large-scale works and abstract image-objects embodying the disorienting forms and scales of Thamesmead’s blocky brutalist architecture, as well as the equally confusing contradictions of housing schemes that both support artists and fuel gentrification for profit. By using non-figurative methods, I examine identity—as an artist living in Thamesmead—and the challenges of community-making in such a context.
About The Thamesmead Chapter was produced at the Penumbra Foundation in NY with the support of SPAIN Arts & Culture, from the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in USA. It was exhibited at the London Art Fair with Nunnery Gallery in January 2020, and featured in Photoworks Issue #22.
#22, from the series About The Thamesmead Chapter. Silver Gelatin Fibre-based paper print manually developed. Float mounted in a bespoke, handmade, acid free board. Framed with anti reflective, UV protective glass. Edition of 5.
# 27, from the series About The Thamesmead Chapter. Install test shot during my residency at Penumbra Foundation, NY
