Alke Schmidt’s work combines seductively beautiful form and critical, socially engaged subject matter, thereby disrupting our ideas of decorative and aesthetic pleasure. It was only a matter of time before she, as a resident of Walthamstow, would turn to local politics - through the lens of William Morris, with whom she shares a love for decorative patterns and a passion for social justice.
ARCADIA is a series of mixed-media works that focus on two cultural ‘non-landmarks’ in the centre of Walthamstow: The fenced-off wasteland at the site of the former ‘Arcade’, cleared years ago to host the proposed new library - linchpin for Walthamstow’s cultural revival - that failed to materialise. Next door, the beautiful art deco EMD (formerly Granada) cinema has been boarded up for even longer, leaving the Borough without a cinema.
What would William Morris think of investment in, and access to, arts and culture in his home town? This question led Alke to make ARCADIA, where she playfully explores the tensions between idea and aesthetic, documentary and decorative.
Starting from photographs of the two boarded up sites and newspaper clippings, Alke has taken the political ideas and designs of William Morris as an inspiration to re-work her initial material, through transformation or direct juxtaposition with Morris’s work. She uses a mix of modern and traditional materials and techniques - often together in the same piece, for example digital printing and embroidery.
ARCADIA was exhibited in the William Morris Gallery, East London, in September 2006 as part of the "Notes in the Margin Exhibition", which continued in the Vestry House Museum with a joint display of work by Alke Schmidt, Liz Ellis and Cinzia Cremona.
In 2007, these two museums were themselves under threat from cutbacks involving drastically reduced opening hours and dismissal of key staff. Suddenly Alke's juxtaposition of Morris' heritage with present-day cultural politics had acquired a new urgency. In May 2007, she therefore installed, as part of the project "No Artist is an Island", a collaborative Notice Board in Walthamstow’s Changing Room Gallery. The aim of the Notice Board, entitled “STATE OF THE ARTS” was to document and capture the spirit of the ongoing campaign to save the museums and cultural assets of Walthamstow. She started the Board with images and clippings from the earlier ARCADIA project and related news coverage. Then she invited gallery visitors to contribute to the Board. During the opening party and throughout the duration of the show, visitors added poems, drawings, collages, prints, flags, flyers and posters of campaign events, newspaper clippings, and even a T-Shirt. Thus the project became truly that of the local community, a document of local “history in the making”. See
No Artist is an Island
for more.
Given the enthusiastic response from visitors, she framed STATE OF THE ARTS and exhibited it during the E17 Art Trail in September 2007, where it became an eye-catching focal point for people from inside and outside the Borough to discuss its “state of the arts”. The display has since been used as backdrop at other campaign events. See
www.keepourmuseumsopen.org.uk
and
www.antiscrap.co.uk
for campaign updates.
|
|