William Hodgson & Jan Kattein. Future Hoxton | Rut Blees Luxemburg. Urban Harvest

About

Will Hodgson and Jan Kattein will build a large-scale model of the Hoxton area as part of an interactive community consultation project. Alongside this, internationally acclaimed and locally based artist Rut Blees Luxemburg will present new works from her urban harvest series.

Future Hoxton is an interactive consultation project exploring the local area of Hoxton, instigated by William Hodgson, Senior Teaching Fellow at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and Jan Kattein, director at Jan Kattein Architects. Future Hoxton encompasses community workshops, public events and a live, three-week model-building showcase; all exploring the immediate areas between Shoreditch Park and the Regent’s Canal in the north, Old Street in the south and Kingsland Road and the Geffrye Museum in the east.

Hoxton has undergone dramatic urban, economic and social transformation during the last twenty years. PEER is at the cultural and economic heart of Hoxton’s two wards, featuring the local street market, Shoreditch Library, Hoxton Post Office and Hoxton Hall. The development pressure on the area has been steadily increasing, with improved public transport links to the city centre and sustained growth of the creative and digital industries. Although included in Hackney’s emerging development plan, Hoxton has no specific planning or area guidance published by the Council.

Future Hoxton aims to develop innovative and inclusive proposals for the area, through workshops and public events. These proposals will be realised in 3D by an architectural model maker, who will produce a large-scale model on-site at PEER. The model will be created in the gallery’s window and used as a tool for public events and a test-bed for urban development. The model will allow for dynamic new proposals for the area while showing the existing buildings and streets. Supporting events will be open to all audiences and will focus on homes, work and recreation.

The information gathered from the consultation project will be submitted as part of the local plan making process to influence both Future Shoreditch and Hackney LP33, which will define the future profile of the neighbourhood.

Urban Harvest is a new body of work by Rut Blees Luxemburg, presenting the artist’s latest preoccupation with the upkeep and neglect of horticulture in urban spaces.

East London is a scene of intense transformation and evolving interests. There are many new towering developments in the vicinity of the ‘digital roundabout’ of Old Street, which contrast with the slow re-emergence of nature, manifest in city allotments and urban gardening.  Urban Harvest is an ongoing field study that brings together analogue photographs of an urban grape vine plant growing on the side of a local corner shop in the shadow of a satellite dish. Here, it is flourishing, despite viticultural indifference and concrete photographs of fragments of vines, in different stages of the yearly cycle, which explore the lesson of the vine.  For Urban Harvest the British poet Douglas Park has written a specially commissioned Vinetrilologue.  “City centre and forest clearing — altogether pounding out their very own real live telltale heartbeat and pulse rate.”          

Rut Blees Luxemburg, May 2018