Coming early next year , “Stowies, a very partial history of Walthamstow”. A photo-montage of the history of the Borough, from when an immigrant named the place to , well, a few years ago. It comes with a 32 page booklet that explains the montage and the fly-leaf of the booklet is a folded up rough copy of the montage . It also has its own scratch and sniff card.
Originally this started out as submission to an exhibition in the Pictorem Gallery, organised and curated by David Sullivan , under the title “Cover”. The idea being to create a work in the style of another artist. Although initially I had dismissed the offer, after all he had written to me saying, “I didn’t realise you were still alive”, but I had an epiphany, not to clump him the I next saw him, but to make something, time was short and lots was happening, but I had an idea.
I was going to do a montage of Walthamstow based on the Peter Blake Beatles album cover, “Sargent Pepper”. I managed to get a good way into it when I lost my hard drive in a puff of smoke. The voltage regulators failed, allowing the whole thing to burn out. Predictably I only had half of it backed up, and being pressed for time and unable to complete it I submitted something else instead.
But the project stuck in my head and I plodded on, through what was a very difficult year. I rebuild the artwork, carried on researching, made field trips to do brass rubbings and take photos, consult archives, delve into the world wide web, read lots of books, I even had to grow my own marijuana and knotweed . All good fun. But what I anticipated being a few images tagged together with an A4 sheet for an index turned into a 32 page booklet with cover, and a fold out fly-cover / dust-jacket, to cover the 115 entries.
It must be said, it is a very personal history, it will not be the same as your history and different again to your neighbours, what was important to me, or caught my eye, will not necessarily have caught yours. But Walthamstow is my home I’ve lived here for neigh on 50 years, known the place a lot longer, and I am very attached to it, these are my memories.
