Southend-on-Sea in Transition

Including artworks and archival material from Access Credit Card, Alan Kane, Jeremy Deller, Dan Mitchell and Simon Periton, Alan Sorrell, Alfred Hitchcock, Ashingdon Colony, Basildon New Town, Bata International, Caspar Heinemann, Cedric Price, Christian Nyampeta, Colin Ward, Dial House, Dunton Plotlands, Eduardo Paolozzi, Essex Wildlife Trust, Gloria Jackson, Graham Burnett, Hadleigh Farm Colony, Hammer Prints Ltd., Hannah Black, Henri Chopin, Ken Worpole, Laindon Labour Colony, Lina Lapelyte, Margaret Thatcher, Mayland Colony, Milly Thompson, Nigel Henderson, Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie, Osea Temperance Society, Othona Community, Purleigh Colony, Roderic Barrett, Ronald Reagan, Silver End Woman’s Institute, Silver End, Southend Libertarian and Anarchist Broadsheet (SLAB), Spiralseed, The Peculiar People, Wickford Colony and many more.

‘The Peculiar People’ is an exhibition and event series tracing the history of ideological and social-political communal living experiments throughout the 20th Century to the present day. These include the pioneering industrial worker estates at East Tilbury and Silver End, as well as the many alternative ideological communities such as the Tolstoy-inspired anarcho-naturist colonies; each revealing Essex as a place where utopias were imagined, traditional ways of living were challenged and revolutionary politics, art, architecture and literature were born and flourished.

Focal Point Gallery’s main exhibition space will feature an extensive archival display speculating on alternative living experiments from the late 1800s to the 1980s, alongside visual art, architecture, design and literature that relate to these counter-cultural histories. The gallery’s second space will house an installation by the artist Christian Nyampeta. This will give a framework to an evolving radical library and dynamic programme of performances, permaculture experiments, readings and public discussions

which extend, question and re-examine modes of non-conformity within a wider cultural and political context.

The exhibition culminates with a shift from socialist-focused agricultural developments to the growth of the financial sector in the East End of London and Britain’s first credit card company establishing itself in Southend-on-Sea. This shifting landscape is explored through the inclusion of Cedric Price’s 1972 model of an unrealised proposal for a lightweight pneumatic roof over the pedestrian shopping area of the town’s High Street.

Talks and Events:

16 April, 7:00 pm
The exhibition will open with artist Lina Lapelyte’s (LH), Ladies, 2015, a performance-concert featuring four women from the Lietuva ensemble.

28 April, 7:00 pm
Artist and writer Caspar Heinemann (UK) will read from their ever-evolving, pastoral poem Good Health & Safety 2015 – ongoing.

12 May, 7:00 pm
Ken Worpole (UK) writes on architecture, landscape, planning, design, and social history. In this talk, Worpole provides an overview of the nonconformist impulse in the Essex landscape (and its forms of settlement), and asks how this impulse fares today.

Visit the website for further information.