Leytonstone Centre of Contemporary Art

When I first moved to Leytonstone I was intrigued by a poster on the stairs leading down from the Eastbound platform at the tube station for an exhibition at the Leytonstone Centre of Contemporary Art. The LCCA turned out to be a purpose built shed in the back garden of 49 Rhodesia Road E11 the work of artist Bob and Roberta Smith. For the show Hearing Voices, Seeing Things the gallery (shed) was relocated to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park.

Later venturing round to 49 Rhodesia Road I was confronted by a turn-of-the-century terrace much like the one I live in not far away with no visable sign of a Centre of Contemporary Art. Suspecting it to be an art prank by a self proclaimed “jester of the art world” I dare not knock on the door and enquire of its whereabouts.

Bob & Roberta Smith appears to be a genuinely original and intriguing artist. In an interview Bob described the project as “a little model of the art world”. Bob (he’s one person so I’ll drop the & Roberta bit for now) also produced a series of his trademark hand painted signs to promote the cause of local shops in a work cryptically titled ‘Shop Local’.

The LCCA does seem to have made a genuine impression upon the art world, proudly appearing on the CVs of many an artist. How many took place in E11 or in the re-located shed I’m not sure but one exhibition, Fight, from September 2002 promised “A crazy day out in Leytonstone” and mentions another gallery space in the area The Leyton Wall Modern at 3 Brisbane Road E10.

I’m not sure whether Bob and Roberta Smith is still living at the house, maybe the forthcoming Leytonstone Arts Trail will give me the plausible cover to buck up the courage to find out.

Here is a bit of further reading and viewing:
Nice vid of Bob working
Link to ICA show
Interview with Bob and Roberta Smith at the LCCA

london

Old Leyton to Hackney and back again

Found this photo of James Lane Leyton on the wall of The Hitchcock pub last night (it’s a photo of the photo, I didn’t nick it). In a dark recess beside the dart throw there is a large C19th map showing the School Board schools in the area. The things you find in pubs if you look beyond your pint.
I originally tried, and failed, sending this from my phone last night as I developed a habit of doing when I started this blog all of five years ago hoofing it to and from the Angel – a place still pregnant with memory for me as I was reminded gliding through at 3am on a 214 from Kentish Town heading east the other night. That bus tours the ghost locations of pleasure gardens marked by brothels boozers and tower blocks – a film I never made (super8 images of Cally Clocktower from Barnard Park, Bagnigge Wells by lamp-light, the Eagle marooned in Hoxditch), the moment now passed.
The latest edit of the Nick film was the reason for this nocturnal tour, again on my mind last night as I flicked to p.51 of Iain Sinclair’s imperious Hackney That Rose-Red Empire, and there an oblique reference to the subject of my film, “the mysterious liminal figure at the edge of the city” (that’s Iain talking in the doc not in the book – get yourself a copy of that). It all loops back and around. The meeting at St. Luke’s with Nick, I was also there that night before I’d met either man.
The loop again, a trek over to Clapton last weekend to drop some Super8 off for telecine. I’ve brought the whole tribe so I take them on a stroll through the “Rose-Red Empire” round my old stomping grounds, the estate squat where I lived and ran the local Labour Party at a time of semi-illegal Labour Council led evictions, and down to Victoria Park where the blank generation have set up a gastro colonial outpost on the old lake where war-time abortions were disposed of. We can’t leave the fugue, even the little guys with their short legs, so we perambulate (in both senses as we have a pram-bulator too) through Old Ford where I re-tell mis-learnt stories of Romans and Danes, across to the Wick and into the manor of Ruckholt where the legs give out and we board a W15.

london

What’s Cookin at The North Star


The North Star, Browning Road 7.45pm Sunday night (just now) and it’s throbbing, barely space to stand, What’s Cookin has rolled in with a regular blues night. The act, Little George, sits huddled between the speakers peering out of plastic undergrowth. The mostly middle-aged audience stood around in a semi-circle heads nodding like some kind of South Pacific tribal ritual. There’s a liberal spattering of pork-pie hats and at least one yellow Stove Pony Records t-shirt stretched clingfilm-tight across a proud pot-belly. This is the E11 beat generation, greying, with enlarged prostates but still going. The possible closure (then rebirth) of this brilliant boozer because of a bureaucratic licensing difficulty gives the night a millenarian vibe – will they be kicking out the blues here on Monday night or will the stiffs at the town hall have closed it down. Nobody seems to care that much if the dancing is anything to go by.

london