Event
Deptford X Festival 2017
22 Sep 2017 – 01 Oct 2017
Deptford X
London, United Kingdom
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Installation view
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Exhibition
Deptford X Fringe 2017: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Deptford
22 Sep 2017 – 30 Sep 2017
Event times
Mon–Fri 09.00–18.30
Sat 09.00–18.00
Closed Sundays
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- 156 Deptford High Street
- Deptford
- London
England - SE8 3PQ
- United Kingdom
Event map
A site specific installation woven over a cafe courtyard on Deptford High Street
About
A canopy is woven above the heads of diners at Deli X. Although apparently abstract, the lines and knots map out the location of power networks in Deptford, stretching from the Thames to New Cross Road. At dusk as darkness creeps over the courtyard, a network of glow-in-the-dark fishing-floats glimmer in the web. This network matches up with the location of constellations above the courtyard at the end of September.
The net is woven using macramé, a technique of making textiles through knotting rope and a crude form of lacework. Macramé has a history intertwined with notions of trade and travel – invented by caravan traders to keep flies off their camels, it was later spread by sailors who wove nets and hammocks in spare hours on board – later trading them on shore. This material history relates to aspects of Deptford’s maritime, outward-facing heritage.
The public intellectual Charles Leadbeater believes that cities are made up of systems and empathy. The woven canopy appears to link the intricate and pragmatic messiness of what lies beneath our feet with eternal astral movements above. Do systems serve us, or do we serve the System? Is the canopy a shelter, or a netted cage?
Notes
During June 2017, the artist took part in the British Council’s fellowship programme in Venice. During this period of research she chose to learn macramé weaving, a technique of making textiles through knotting rope, as a means of mapmaking that is more equivocal, capricious and unstable than traditional cartography.
The title of the piece refers to the 2014 Forward Prize-winning collection of poems by Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, in which a Cartographer and a Rastafarian dispute the properties and capabilities of mapmaking in asserting control over territory.
Presented as part of Deptford X Fringe, a contemporary visual arts festival running since 1998 and taking place in galleries, shops, streets, and public and private spaces within a mile of Deptford Station.
