East End Review

Tag: Hundred Years Gallery

Brave New Hoxton – Hackney children curate Museum of the Future at the Hundred Years Gallery

Some exhibits from the Museum of the Future. Photograph: Ministry of Stories

Novelists, illustrators and others with overactive imaginations have long concocted visions of future Londons – the dystopias of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World immediately spring to mind – so perhaps it’s not surprising children are now doing the same.

Sci-fi, futurology and fantasy lend themselves well to a city that breaks boundaries in fashion, architecture and the like, and now a “museum of the future” is to be added to the many institutions in the capital displaying objects from the far distant past.

The “museum” is in fact a temporary exhibition at the Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton, and it will introduce visitors to possible sights, sounds, threats and artefacts from the future.

Curated and created entirely by children, whose naturally overactive imaginations mean they probably needed no encouragement, it is the brainchild of charity Ministry of Stories.

It features space-football and “evil washing machines”, and there will be five zones, each exploring a different theme including “creature attack,” natural disasters and time travel.

All of stories in the exhibition were penned by Hoxton children aged 8-12, who have been working with Ministry of Stories in its Thursday and Saturday out-of-school groups.

Hoxton Museum of the Future will open to the public on Saturday 30 July (11am-5pm) and Sunday 31 July (11am – 3pm).

Imagine what Samuel Pepys might make of Pokemon Go and you will have some idea of how our city in four hundred years’ time might look to us today.

Catch the show soon before it’s a thing of the past.

Museum of the Future
30 – 31 July
Hundred Years Gallery
13 Pearson Street
E2 8JD

July 28, 2016
Docs around the clock – Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival preview

Vera Hems Anderson and Natailia Garay, founders of the Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival. Photograph: Cheap Cuts

Hackney director Asif Kapadia may have won an Oscar for his film about Amy Winehouse, but budding documentary makers from East London and beyond continue to have a difficult time making work and getting it shown.

Documentary can be an unnecessarily inaccessible medium, according to filmmakers Vera Hems Anderson and Natalia Garay, which is why they together founded Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival.

The volunteer-run festival, which takes place over the weekend of 2–3 April at Hundred Years Gallery, is for films under 30 minutes long made without a huge budget or the backing of a production company.

Filmmakers submitted their work for free (which is increasingly rare these days) with a total of 1,400 submissions received for the fledgling festival.

“Our aim is to make documentary accessible to people for all walks of life. We think too many film screenings and festivals have become exclusive events and this is both unfair and unproductive,” Anderson says.

“Film can be an extremely inaccessible medium and financially the film industry is one of the most unforgiving around. Film schools remain out of reach for most young people, obtaining the latest equipment is not cheap and even cinema trips are now a luxury outing.”

The open doors submissions policy meant Cheap Cuts received a diverse range of documentaries, some by unknown filmmakers from countries such as Syria, Mexico and Iran, as well as home grown practitioners from East London and elsewhere in the UK.

“We strongly believe in content over form and are interested in the stories filmmakers have to tell and not the equipment or budget used to do so,” Anderson adds.

In keeping with the festival ethos of inclusivity, screenings are free to attend, with the weekend itinerary also including workshops and at least one masterclass with a renowned documentary maker.

Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival
2-3 April
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, E2 8JD

March 30, 2016
Va-va zoom! Photomonth is upon us once more

Living in Exile by Matthew Aslett. Part of F8 Collective launch, until 18 October at Hive Dalston

With more than 100 Photomonth exhibitions to take in over October and November, and at least 500 contributing artists, it is understandably difficult to know exactly where to focus one’s gaze.

The state of London today is a common theme among work presented this year. For his satirical series Harrodsburg, Glaswegian Dougie Wallace ventured into West London, where he papped the mega rich out shopping in what he calls a “story of glut, greed and the widening wealth gap”.

Harrodsburg by Dougie Wallace. Until 19 October at theprintspace

Portraits of a different kind line the walls of one East End institution. Seven photographers have snapped the tourists, shoppers, revellers and stressed out office workers who frequent Brick Lane Beigel Bake, with the results on display there this month.

6am by Jonathan Goldberg part of Twentyfour7 exhibition. Until 22 November at Brick Lane Beigel Bake

The future of East London in the face of luxury blocks of flats and rising living costs is of concern to Hackney Wick resident Ansell Cizic. In The Wick and Beyond, he records those artists whose very presence in the East has helped it become an attractive proposition for property developers.

Venice Mob from East End, by Ansell Cizic. The Wick and Beyond until 1 November at Well Hung Gallery

Jerwood Drawing Prize nominee Pete Burke takes a more voyeuristic look at what the future holds. Glimpsing the Future is a series of photographs taken through building site peepholes in Hackney, which he is displaying alongside drawings that act as a route between them.

Dalston Junction by Pete Burke, part of Glimpsing the Future, until 1 November

Not all the exhibitions are about the here and now. Syd Shelton’s photographs of the 1970s Rock Against Racism movement capture an intriguing political period in which musicians and political activists confronted racist ideology on the streets and in parks.

Photograph by Syd Shelton, part of Rock Against Racism, until 5 December at Autograph ABP

Global issues come to the fore with Africa’s Last Colony, which remembers conflict in Western Sahara 40 years ago with never before seen images by UK-based photographers , while Kites from Kabul, a series of photographs of kite flying sights around Kabul and Bamiyan, provides an insight into the lives of children living in war-torn Afghanistan. (12)

Quintana Valero, Africa’s Last Colony: 40 Years Not Forgotten, until 28 October at Hundred Years Gallery

Oculi by Andrew Quilty, part of Kites from Kabul, until 3 January at the V&A Museum of Childhood

As usual for Photomonth, there’s a staggering breadth of work on display, with subjects that push boundaries and defy categorisation. Zoo Logic by David O’Shaughnessy looks at captivity through photographs of the environments in which zoo animals are presented to the public, and Piotr Karpinski’s photographs of people doing strange things in morgues and graveyards view life and death with humour and originality.

Cercopithecus Wolfi by David O’Shaughnessy, part of Zoo Logic. Until at Stour Space

Old Woman with Narcissus by Piotr Karpinski, Let’s Talk about Life & Death Darling from 1–30 November at St James the Great Church

Deciding where to go is perhaps the main drawback to Photomonth, but with the standards of exhibitions seemingly ever rising there’s a fair chance that whatever you choose will be a winner.

October 7, 2015