Thurlow house. Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin

About

Taplow House, South East London, SE17 2UH, its name descending from Taeppa’s Low, SU9061 8216, a 7th Century Anglo-Saxon burial mound imposingly situated 29 miles west of Taplow House. Both have come to share a curious synergy. High on a cliff overlooking the Thames within the range of a prehistoric hillfort, Taeppa’s Low commands a wide view westwards, perhaps situated to send a message of ancestral defiance into the Wessex heartland and to be a watchful guardian of its territory. Eastwards and firmly in Kentish territory, Taplow House, has its own political dimensions, an imposing tower block within the notorious Aylesbury estate. Built between 1963 and 1977 the estate was one of the most imposing in Europe, one of the last to be built using the now defunct LPS (large panel system) of prefabricated concrete slabs. This style along with its raised walkways almost immediately became synonymous with urban decline. And it is here where Tony Blair gave his first public speech as Prime Minister, on 2nd June 1997 with his ‘Will to win’ speech, standing high on a balcony, saluting out towards the country. The speech signaled New Labour’s shift from ideological stance to a pragmatic posture. In the autumn of 1883, a parish clerk and a bunch of local antiquarians decided to excavate Taeppa’s Low. ‘They attacked the mound with a zeal only outmatched by their incompetence, bringing down tons of earth onto the exposed burial deposit, producing contradictory plans of the burial, and failing to keep any systematic record of their observations’ (Webster) In the spring of 2014, artists Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin entered the rooms of Taplow House, spaces that had been boarded up for 30 years, intent on recording the site before its redevelopment. Over a 10 day period they attempted to apply contemporary archeological recording practices onto the site- they began to scan and data capture with new vision technologies such as RTI. A space, burnt out by an electrical fire, became a carbon pad, a contemporary Cueva de las Manos of sorts.Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin will present in ASCs new refurbished gallery 3D prints and scans of these spaces as represented fragments-a time machine.