verityjanekeefe

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Walk #1, 9th January 2020, 9 miles / Scotland

I’ve been looking over the Loch for a few days now. From the top of the hill. Teasing me out. A track along the top of the peninsula, castle tops, farms, sheep, ferry’s crossing in the distance, with wind, rain, sunshine and mist in one view. I walk faster up the hill, then slow as I come down. New tarmac laid out for miles. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Barns with tin roofs, collapsing stone arch on the left, jack russells’ barking on the right. A crowd. From solitude to crossing three other solitary walkers. Hello. Cracking day for it. Turn off the road, drop down a steep winding lane towards the loch. Lane gets thinner, farm buildings turn into ornate cottages, gate houses and castles. Details detail, details. Pitched roof. Turret. Two drives. Five cars. Diamond shaped windows. Round windows. Range rover. Scaffolding wrapped structure. The Loch is lapping to my left as the pavement runs out. A brown tourist sign, bent, but functioning, leads me up a path on the right. An overgrown botanical garden, full of bamboo, ferns, life. Empty kiosk. Closed. An honesty box which I use. A broken wooden bridge which I don’t use. No one else around. The empty villa at the top, surrounded by palms. Along the Loch road, a beautiful silvery, salt and pepper dog. “I got him to match my hair, he likes you” The owner flashes me her hair, an almost perfect match from under her waterproof hood, we laugh and walk on in different directions. Beautiful granite. I touch it and photograph it. A Royal Mail van stops and asks if I’m OK. “I am. It’s so beautiful” I’m still touching the stone. Walk on crossing the road, back and forth to avoid traffic. I pass the three solitary walkers again at different times. We greet each other like old friends. “Careful on the bend round the way, it’s really slippy on the side of the road with all the leaves.”. I pass a man with a fine paintbrush, painting the decorative, italic housename sign that’s fixed to the stone. “Looking good” I say. “The bastard wind’s against me, I can’t get the I right and they want it perfect”. Heave myself up the final hill trying to beat the storm. 12% incline. Talking to the horses on the way to help me to the top. Sitting on a wall thinking about the last three hours the Royal Mail van drives past again and toots and waves.

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My portrait of Stephen Mooring and his cat, Bronte, GLC Project Architect for Thamesmead Stage 3 , The Moorings & responsible for the brilliant shopping complex, social club & Harold Wilson House, wonderful character and now my mate. Talking social housing ambitions, Droitwich, Finland, Thamesmead, Frank Lloyd Wright and Racine, Wisconsin / Work in progress, Thamesmead Residency 

#verity-jane keefe #thamesmead #The Moorings Archive #Residency

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Accidental holiday photos taken in Ireland

#accidental photos #verity-jane keefe

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Welcome to Thamesmead / Promotional VHS produced by the PR & marketing department of Thamesmead Town in 1997

“Thamesmead is in a period of growth. This video gives a visual experience of Thamesmead at this exciting time of its development. Presented by Anna-Maria Ashe of London News Network, viewers will get a true taste of Thamesmead today.”

Digitising and researching, constructing a new archive for my residency on The Moorings, Thamesmead Stage 3, commissioned by Peabody

#verity-jane keefe #Thamesmead #GLC #The Moorings #Archive

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Happy reservoir side jogging, happy apprenticeships / Development hoarding, Woodberry Down "Natural city living beside an exhilarating waterside location" 1981 homes demolished, 5,500 built, £435,000+

#Hackney #regeneration #WoodberryDown

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Barking Power Station Control Room / Site visit

A site visit to Barking Power Station Control Room, a ridiculously beautiful building, dripping in history and utilitarian ambition.

Lucky me

More on this soon

#barking #dagenham #London Borough of Barking and Dagenham #barking riverside #photography #artist #derelict #london

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NO BALL GAMES / A Collection

A collection of photographs of No Ball Games signs, all found within the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham.  21 examples, collected over the last five + years

All photographs taken by Verity-Jane Keefe. 

Not to be reproduced without permission

#London Borough of Barking and Dagenham #no ball games #verity-jane keefe #work #collections #looking #flaneuring #psychogeaography

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Flock of seagulls / Dry goods dock, Tilbury Port #Estuary16

#Estuary16 #Work #Tilbury #Tilbury Port #Dock

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London for sale via video wall / insane development marketing, Commercial Street

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Verity-Jane Keefe /

Aspirational messages / regeneration, the future, designed

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Verity-Jane Keefe /

Aspirational messages / regeneration, the future, working

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I made this >

A fold out map for the cultural explorer. Mapping commissions, public realm schemes, artworks etc across Barking & Dagenham. As part of a piece of research I've been doing on cultural value and provision supported by a Creative Barking & Dagenham People Going Places Grant with help from London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Let me know if you would like a copy

#cultural map #map #artist #commission #London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

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62 bus segment along Valence Avenue / previously a temporary rail route transporting building materials to construct Becontree, RM8 #LCC #Becontree

#Becontree #LCC #Housing

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The Mobile Museum: soft launch

Saturday 13th June, some images from the soft launch at Valence House.

#The Mobile Museum #Verity-Jane Keefe #Soft Launch #Valence House

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The Mobile Museum Soft Launch / I've said it before & I'll definitely say it again, this will be LOW KEY / HIGH EMOTION.  Come & join me in smashing a fake bottle of champs over the front of this thing & saying Bon Voyage.

If you can't make it there will be plenty of other opportunities and moments to get involved with, making things, doing things, looking at things and so on.

Toot Toot

#The Mobile Museum #verity-jane keefe #london #Art Commission #London Borough of Barking and Dagenham #valence house

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Go to Ground

Written from memory, from email correspondence, from notebooks & from Hackney, a piece I was commissioned to write about Hackney, my love affair with it, being an artist against a backdrop of regeneration and change.  Available to buy here and read here

#verity-jane keefe #Regeneration #go to ground #art writing #hackney

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Written from memory, from email correspondence, from notebooks & from Hackney

I was commissioned by Vulpes Vulpes to write something for their new publication “Go To Ground”.  Here’s the text

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2009 /  

“Woodberry Down is a new luxury development in North London, located on the banks of the New River and West and East Reservoir overlooking more than 42 acres of tranquil open water. “ Berkeley Homes

Woodberry Down Estate Regeneration. Ground broken to mark construction of first phase. Haggerston and Kingsland Estate, early stages of demolition continue.

Test trains on the new ELL extension, the first trains to pull into Dalston Junction since it closed in 1984, the sound of electrification and mobility carry’s across the borough.

Walking Westwards down the Regents Canal between Broadway Market and the Kingsland Road.  Bright orange boards cover the delightful brick structures that form the 1930’s Haggerston Estate.  Some have faces on, some don’t.

I am here, by Fugitive Images, hints at the changes that are to come. Haggerston Estate is being demolished, I can hear it happening, the decanting process is not so evident.

I continue walking to go and look around a potential new studio in Dalston, just off Arcola Street. “It’s horrible there” my flatmate says “a proper blow-job pipe smoking alley”.  Contract signed. There’s a boarded up parking plot on the Kingsland Road opposite with white paint daubed on it proclaiming NO POSTERS although the T has been removed, no posers, a rye prediction of the potential future of this Turkish strip of Hackney.

Hackney’s regeneration / gentrification / transformation / xxxxxxx (delete as appropriate) is happening in earnest.  Slowly to some, but for anyone with a keen interest in the agents of such change, the local authorities, the Olympic Delivery Agency, the developers and so on, this has been planned for decades.  Change is good! More shops! Trains! Safer streets! City fringes!

2010 /

“Coming soon: A stunning new development at the heart of the regeneration of Dalston. Dalston Square provides a relaxing oasis set back from the hustle and bustle of Kingsland High Street.” Barratts Homes

I walked the Rotherhithe tunnel just before Brunel’s structure became home to the new rolling stock.

Dalston Junction opens to passengers, Dalston Square slowly begins to get populated and the shadows of tower blocks and cranes make their mark on Dalston Lane.  The peace mural remains, more places are opening, bars, clubs, a LOT of plain black facades pop up and then pop down.  Everyone’s an artist.

I fall in love. First proper, awkward date at Vulpes Vulpes, a hand holding session that lasts beyond the duration of Heliotrope.

Hang Parliament. All change.

I go and visit another potential studio on Dalston Lane. 230. Last time I’d been here the place was derelict, there was a huge rave over two floors and I lost my mind (and fell down the stairs), the second hand furniture shop was still there below, before anyone from round here knew what Borough Wines was or tasted like.  

“We've got some more studios available, they're all really nice and bright big windows etc, start from about 200+ square foot for £300 PCM.”

Crittall windows, a dense mouse population and the odd rat falling through the ceiling.  The Boiler Room is upstairs, a new Tesco opens downstairs.  

Things are definitely changing.

2011 /

“City Mills: Made for Living

The City Mills development takes full advantage of its location and offers potential inhabitants a realistic dream of contemporary urban living and the fulfilling lifestyle that comes with it.” Taylor Wimpey

Riots. The Mayor’s Riot fund. Riot chat.  Hackney chat. Peckham chat. A census and I’m pleased to report everyone’s still an artist, eating gozlemes and drinking warm red stripes in basements.

The exodus begins: Everyone’s leaving. Going South.  Peckham / Camberwell / New Cross, but mainly Peckham.  Friends move in bucket loads. Some open a pub. Some set up studios. One promotes club nights. “You watch, you’ll ruin Peckham just like you did when you moved here a couple of years ago”.  A pub joke between long standing friends. My ruin is their make. We all begin to make the pilgrimage there for nights out, stranded on Rye Lane waiting for the night bus as the tables turn.

My landlord increases our rent by 75%. “We have a queue of people waiting to live in this building Verity, Dalston is very desirable now, we can thank the artists for that”,

I move house 7 times. From an empty office block on Scrutton St (now demolished) to two separate warehouses in Hackney Wick, friend’s spare rooms to end the year in a shared flat near London Fields.  From my bedroom window I can hear the trains pulling into Dalston Junction and the distant banging and clanging of Haggerston Estate’s demolition merging with City Mills’ first phase construction.  Made for Living. We’re told by the hoardings that we are living on the city fringes, so close to opportunity and potential as told by croissants and vintage renders of happy 20 something creative professionals gazing east, laminated at £420,000 per two bed.  

2012 /

The year of the acronym.

LOCOG, ODA, LDA, LLDC, TfL

VJK 2012

The entire year is dominated by the Olympics, that heady fortnight happening in a small portion of our Borough.  There’s some serious tidying and tarting up of the streets around here, planting, pruning, paving.  It’s bonkers.  I feel very un-Olympic and unfit and uninterested. But the domination prevails.

I definitely feel like I’m living in a contradiction.  You can see and smell the crass influx of money on every street corner and subway, mixed with the heady aroma of poverty.  My place as an artist feels more contentious, why am I here if it is no longer affordable. We are priced out of another studio and retreat for the White Building in Hackney Wick, just in time to develop my un-Olympicness.  I hear the PA of the stadium being tested from my studio window, the soldiers parading the waterways, invigilating the spectacle.

I get no work done but gaze out of the window at the sporting wonderland that has been constructed before my eyes. Public space, private public space, the neon W of Westfield winking at me teasing me over. No right of way as yet though, just a huge resin bound tease.

The London Overground is complete.  We can all travel to Peckham Rye in less than 28 minutes. Migrating towards the energised anything.

Foxtons opens on Mare Street, David Beckham gets a speedboat through Hackney’s waterways. Sweet dreams.

2013 /

“Our visionary plans will transform an area, that recently had many vacant disused buildings, into a world-class fashion development. This together with the refurbished railway arches will create a unique fashion hub.” Hackney Fashion Hub

One final studio move to Mare Street.

It’s quiet, really quiet. Just sound tracked by the sound of making and The Archers not people talking about making whilst drinking Archers.

I love it.

2014 /

“Pembury Circus is an ideal opportunity for those looking for contemporary new homes or investment property in London. These stylish new apartments in Hackney offer fantastic connections around the capital, ideal for those looking for a faster daily commute into the city or for students studying at the surrounding universities and colleges.”

Pembury Circus, Bellway Homes

It is the 50th birthday of the term Gentrification, first coined by sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 in “London: Aspects of Change” a prescient read that is much dog eared on my shelf. Happy Birthday Gentrification.  Hip - hip…

"One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle-classes—upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages—two rooms up and two down—have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences … Once this process of 'gentrification' starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed."

50 years since the invention of the word, now it can be heard twice in the space of one trip on the 236 bus. Gentrification is nothing new, it’s been happening since the Roman era; they just didn’t have such a groovy word for it.

2015 /

“ VIBE - DISCOVER THE COOL OF THE EAST: First it was Hoxton, then it was Shoreditch, now it’s Dalston’s turn in the spotlight as the hottest new location in London’s exciting new Eastern Quarter……The area is increasingly attracting a rich mix of creatives, media executives, fashionistas, style leaders and young City professionals”

VIBE, Telford Homes

The Catholic School is demolished, Vibe Dalston emerges out of the rubble.

I have begun my grieving period.  This will be the worst break up I’ve ever had to deal with as I’m pretty sure that in 2015, as the London borough of Hackney celebrates it’s 50th birthday since graduating from the trio of municipals Hackney, Stoke Newington and Shoreditch I will be priced out again. Happy Birthday Hackney, you’ve got that Vibe.  Hip - hip…

#verity-jane keefe #hackney #regeneration #housing #artist writing #vulpes vulpes