Vinyl window texts, exhibited at Rest & its discontents, Mile End Art Pavilion, 30 September – 30 October 2016.

This series of four installed vinyls drew on my archival research into the Peckham Experiment, a community centre based in South London between the wars, which aimed to observe human health and activity in its environmental context.

The texts incorporate and depart from fragments taken from books, manuscripts and letters by the founders of the Peckham Experiment, Innes Hope Pearse and George Scott Williamson. The themes of these short stories range from industrial workplaces and ruins to biological development and experiment, tied by a common focus on rhythm and the movement between states of activity and rest.

Moving between past and present, and drawing on the strange mix of biology, esoteric spiritualism, vitalism and anarchism to be found in the Experiment’s archives, the texts also incorporate references to the history of the Mile End Art Pavilion, which is built on the site of a wood veneer factory.

Graphic design by Lina Hakim.

Photographs: Daniela Cascella (1), Peter Kidd (2-4).