LEGEND: A-Z OF THE LEA VALLEY
In September 2014 51 copies of Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley were assembled on a public production line in an industrial building Stratford, East London (formally home to countless print works). The culmination of years of research, making and community engagement in this area the pop up book ‘Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley’ charts an alternative moving history of the area of East London transformed to stage the London 2012 Olympic Games. This handheld animation of regeneration is local and universal charting and reimagining industrial decline, mutating place names, flora and fauna and local legends.
The book is represented by Kaleid Editions who took it straight from production line to the 2014 London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery where it was awarded the Birgit Skiold Award for Excellence. It is in the collections of the V&A Museum's National Art Library, Saison Poetry Library, MoMA, MACBA, Lafayette, Clark Art Institute, the Yale Center for British Art and the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection. It was shortlisted for the Ruskin Prize and selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition by Norman Ackroyd who took it on to the Original Print Show at Zillah Bell Gallery.
Pop Up Pop Up was the finale production of Hilary Powell’s AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. It was supported by Arts Council England, UCL, Institute of Making and London Borough of Newham. In memory of Valli Van Zijl who believed in the project and helped secure site, furniture and much more.
