ROSE-RED EMPIRE

Důvěrná zpráva od Iaina Sinclaira s původními tisky a kresbami od O. G. H. Hamiltona. Iain Sinclair’s Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire uncovers the social, historic and psycho-geography of Hackney and contains within its pages a series of prints and drawings by Oona Grimes. At the same time as hosting the launch for this new book, Danielle Arnaud contemporary art draws together the work of artists who, through a variety of media, visually reference Sinclair’s explorations of Hackney. Participating artists include Renchi Bicknell, Brian Catling, Susanna Edwards, Stephen Gill, Oona Grimes, Emma Matthews, Jock McFadyen, Chris Petit, Emily Richardson and Sarah Simblet.
Iain Sinclair writes of the ironic metaphor of shifting this specific project to the opposite side of the Thames: ‘Transporting a raft of Hackney connected materials across the river to Lambeth is both an act of homage to the local artisan-visionary, William Blake, and an acknowledgement of a certain kind of expulsion: the dark shadow of the Olympic fence, super-malls, art as sponsored interventionism. My book, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, offending the index of Orwellian politics and spin, has been banished from its generative territory. Inviting a number of artists, photographers, film-makers who are implicated in the book, or celebrated by it, to offer some of their work for this exhibition, was a conscious salute to another Lambeth manifestation: Tradescant’s Ark. That inspirational cabinet of curiosities. Here, for me, is a museum of words reintroduced into the world, language-sounds becoming objects and images. So it folds and unfolds, the slippery narrative of memory and myth.’