About this event
Join us for One of the most planned for spaces in the world, the third of a series of free walks in relation to Making Space, a multi-sited commission by London-based artist Jessie Brennan for the Royal Docks in Newham.
This walk, led by artist, Eloise Hawser will explore how new infrastructure has been implanted into the Royal Docks, and its older forms subsequently estranged. With the new roads, railway, closure to marine traffic, and airport, for example, the Docks’ surrounding cranes are now ornamental, urban furniture; the grand Victorian municipal buildings are boarded up; the once famed Gallions Hotel oscillates between use and dereliction; the pumping stations maintain water levels for Docks that no longer employ any dockers.
This three-hour walk will begin at Beckton Park DLR, going on to explore some of the most Eastern parts of the Docks. We’ll be tracing the history of the dock’s infrastructure, especially its water systems, including the redevelopment of the marina, pumping stations, draining systems for the construction of London City Airport, and the newest plans for a proposed shipyard on the overgrown and near-derelict Albert Island, the first in London over three hundred years. We will discuss how this knot of infrastructural change has enabled a highly mobile, transient population of passengers, commuters, students, workers, and visitors, and simultaneously attracts and expels people from the Docks.
All walks will later be made available as self-guided walks through a series of downloadable podcasts and printable maps as a lasting legacy of the project.
All Making Space walks will take place in person in the Royal Docks, Newham. COVID-19 social distancing and guidance will apply.
Making Space and the associated walks programme has been curated by UP Projects and commissioned by the Royal Docks Team.
About Eloise Hawser
Eloise Hawser is a resident artist at Somerset House, working across sculpture, film, and digital platforms. Her practice investigates an expanded notion of infrastructure, tracking our personal investments and relationships across industrial production, circulation, and consumption. Public involvement is at the heart of her work, having organised a number of site visits and walking tours. In 2019, Eloise led ‘A new way to set’, a night-walk of Fleet Street with visits to former newspaper printers and contemporary news media agencies, such as Bloomberg’s London headquarters. In 2020, she led an Arts Council funded series ‘800,000 tonnes’, which included five public tours across waste management sites in Essex and a one-day, interactive event at Focal Point Gallery. She is also leading a forthcoming walk of the Royal Docks, called ‘Stop Press News’, where Eloise and local residents collaborate with archives and libraries to map the histories of the printed news in East London.