Iain Sinclair

Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting (dressed as a Straw Bear), made an eighty mile walk from Epping Forest to Helpston in Northamptonshire, following in the footsteps of the poet John Clare. Clare’s delirious march is the catalyst for the project. A great English pilgrimage and a self-enacted novel in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progress.

The walk was documented using pinhole photography and video and has now been edited to form the backdrop of the installation. The artists Nick Gordon Smith, Anonymous Bosch, Philippe Ciompi and Jem Finer as well as the singer Macgillivray and the musician David Aylward have all collaborated in support of the exhibition as well as Alan Moore and Kötting’s daughter Eden who has contributed paintings and text in the guise of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Dilston Grove, Southwark Park, London SE16 2DD admin@cgplondon.org +44 (0)20 7237 1230 CGP????London – Cafe Gallery and Dilston Grove – is managed by the Bermondsey Artists’ Group which is an artist-led organisation, a not-for-profit company registered in England no.3353857 and a Registered Charity no. 1073851. Financially assisted by Arts Council England and Southwark Council.

cgplondon.org

For the opening of the installation, Sunday, 9th November there will be a live performance at 3pm.

Three other performances will also take place on:
8th December, at Battersea Arts Centre | http://tinyurl.com/mmxwmox

10th December at Colchester Arts Centre | http://tinyurl.com/q946mxn

11th December at Whitechapel Gallery | http://tinyurl.com/lzwaf2o
A feature film will be released in the new year through Soda Pictures.

NB:

In 2000 Iain Sinclair set out to recreate Clare’s walk away from madness. He wanted to understand his bond with the poet and escape the gravity of his London obsessions. Accompanied on this journey by his wife Anna (who shares a connection with Clare), the artist Brian Catling and magus Alan Moore, Sinclair’s quest for Clare becomes an investigation into madness, sanity and the nature of the poet’s muse. And this is echoed throughout the installation. His book, Edge of the Orison will be made available throughout the exhibition.

‘Brilliant . . . amusing, alarming and poignant. An elegy for an already lost English landscape. Magnificent and urgent’. Robert Macfarlane, Times Literary Supplement.

‘A sensitive, beautifully rendered portrait . . . a feast, a riddle, a slowly unravelling conundrum . . . a love-letter to British Romanticism’. The Independent

‘Sinclair walks every inch of his wonderful novels and psychogeographies, pacing out huge word-courses like an architect laying out a city on an empty plain’. J. G. Ballard, The Observer.

CGP London is financially assisted by Arts Council England and Southwark Council. CGP London provides two contrasting spaces for artists to realise ambitious new projects: Cafe Gallery which is a modern purpose-built space comprising three interlinked ‘white room’ spaces and Dilston Grove, Britain’s first in-situ poured concrete structure, that provides with a cavernous raw space for large-scale installations and performance.

CGP London artist patrons

Ackroyd & Harvey, Andrew Kötting, Mike Nelson, Cornelia Parker, Iain Sinclair, Richard Wentworth, Richard Wilson.

CGP London patrons

Breckman & Company, Paul and Louise Cooke, Lord and Lady Stevenson.

Listings information

CGP London: Dilston Grove – By Our Selves (The Installation) | Andrew Kötting & Iain Sinclair Southwark Park, London, SE16 2DD,
www.cgplondon.org
+44 (0) 20 7237 1230

Opening times

14 November – 14 December 2014 | Friday – Sunday from 11am – 4pm.

Preview: Sunday, 9 November from 2:30 – 4:30pm with a live performance starting promptly at 3pm.

Transport

Underground: Canada Water on the Jubilee and London Overground Lines. Rail: South Bermondsey Buses: 1, 47, 188, 199, 225, 381, 395, P12, C10 all stop at Canada Water station.
Canada Water station is seven minutes walk from Southwark Park.
Car/Taxi: Enter Southwark Park via the Southwark Park Road entrance. Free parking in the park.

Dilston Grove, Southwark Park, London SE16 2DD admin@cgplondon.org +44 (0)20 7237 1230 CGP????London – Cafe Gallery and Dilston Grove – is managed by the Bermondsey Artists’ Group which is an artist-led organisation, a not-for-profit company registered in England no.3353857 and a Registered Charity no. 1073851. Financially assisted by Arts Council England and Southwark Council.

cgplondon.org