Hackney WickED A Triumph For London’s Best Alternative Art Festival

Hackney WickED 2014

Last weekend was sizzling and what better way to spend a day than wandering around one of the UK’s leading alternative free art festivals, Hackney WickED! I was there on Friday and there was so much to do that I  make my way down again Sunday for a final look around. This was a great overview to seeing what is coming out of the art colleges, authentic Street Art and emerging energetic fine art covering every discipline.

The Hackney Wick ‘Riviera’ at Forman’s Fish Island and Swan Wharf is like anowhere else in London. It is jam packed with Galleries and open studios to visit and gives you the chance to discover ‘what’s happening on the edgier side of the London art scene’. There are over 100 open galleries to explore and 15 exhibitions that have been put on especially for the festival, so don’t miss this fantastic opportunity!

This year Arts Council England has actually opened their pockets to sponsor some of the special commissions like, Roaming Artwork Commissions, AAS – Lammas Drone Silo, Eloise Fornieles – To The Dirt (I) A two-day performance and installation, which re-examines our relationship with nature and investigates the gap between what is considered wild and what is considered civilised. The work maps a breakdown of language and environment, using symbols, sounds and gestures navigate what was previously experienced as familiar terrain. Rosie Ridgway – Free Willy Ridgway uses the mechanisms of music to subvert the original message or intention of songs. She celebrates music and its capacity for generating alternative activities or action. New work will be shown as part of Hackney WickED Art Festival, encompassing ideas of the onstage character and conflating real life issues with manufactured or choreographed ones. Daryl Brown – Living Living Living Living Life: A new site-specific public artwork by Daryl Brown, curated by Ingrid Z of The Residence Gallery. The work will act as a ‘memorial for the wasteland’, stemming from the pre-olympic/pre-gentrification history of Hackney Wick. Also Stephen Gill – Hackney Wick 2003: In 2003 Stephen Gill bought a basic 1960s box camera made by Coronet for 50 pence at Hackney Wick market, near where he lived. The camera had a plastic lens, and it lacked focus or exposure controls. Over the next two years Gill used the camera to photograph people and the environment at the market, which eventually because the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics. As well as what, and how, Gill photographed, the pictures are also distinguished by the unpredictable and poorly rendered images from the camera. “In the late ’90s and early 2000s the idea of quality and technique became so important… and conversations around photography were often very much about dpi and megapixels. Part of me was letting go and rebelling.
At the time when Hackney WickED was invented, in the garden of The Residence Gallery, the area was connected to a strong sense of radical freedom afforded by the surrounding wasteland, disused warehouses, wild flowers, traveller communities, spiritualists, ravers, vagrants and artists. Anything seemed possible. The ‘wasteland’ welcomed the outsiders, offered cheap rents and plenty of space to explore and experiment.

Other things to do include, The Elevator Gallery’s well curated exhibition The Tomorrow People,The WickED Exhibition, Hackney Swingers Club, a chance to sit inside a giant bird’s nest, and exhibition inspired by our relationship with Google, Facebook, and other social media. More Info Here  http://www.hackneywicked.co.uk/

There is also music on offer. The main stage will host live acts ranging from Paolo Nutini’s pals The Hempolics to The Beatbox Collective, who are fresh from Lovebox and Glastonbury.

Today (Sunday)  is the last day so get down there and don’t miss it!!!

Watch Vine Video Here: The Elevator Gallery’s curated exhibition ‘The Tomorrow People’

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