Textures as Maps

Having never been to the Parfitt Gallery at Croydon College before I walked through the front entrance just off of Wellesley Road and proceeded straight into a student hair salon, a harsh architectural reminder that no matter how grand and symmetrically centred a front entrance appears it cannot be trusted to be so. Luckily for myself I was quickly redirected in the right direction without any loss of hair through further stress or eager hairdresser. 

My newly acquired visitors badge trustingly stuck to my coat, I proceeded towards the Parfitt Gallery; a white coated, glass fronted single room with two columns set asymmetrically giving the space a certain unavoidable definition. Getting closer to the room one could make out the distorted prints hinting at Croydon’s historic and more recent skyline along with variously aged photographs of the town all set to a 1960’s concrete grey background. Therefore as one of the more recent self-proclaimed urban explorers of Croydon’s curiously shadowed corners and desaturated surfaces I needed no invite to enter this luring yet empty room.

Curated by Croydon School of Art and London College of Communication Lecturer Rob Mowbray with contributions from Graphic designers / artists Craig Burston and Martin Saull, Ghost Town: The Hauntology of Croydon aspires to motivate a different approach towards our understanding of the majority of the built environment that dictates Croydon. Using the many high-rise offices that were built in the 1960’s as fuel and inspiration, the exhibition explores the effect the towering built forms and their often uniform concrete skins have on us through photographic, artistic and psychogeographic mediums.

The gallery door left open by myself I realised once again that I was within the stomach of an active college as the assault of noise arose from the end of a teaching period, paused conversations revived once more safely away from the ears of teachers, spies. Noise successfully buffered I turned around and proceeded towards what appeared to be delicate prints of maps uniformly hung on the back wall. However, as I drew close my eyes slowly deciphered these prints and they were in fact beautifully selected detail photographs of Croydon’s built environment of its varying concrete surfaces. How interesting it is that concrete, a material that for the most part is used to generate some of the largest forms known to man can have such mysteriousness and illusion at a micro scale, and hence why I found myself happily staring at these photographs for quite some time.

Despite having a healthy choice of artistically critical material to browse through and respond to there was one particular piece that seemed to effortlessly scream for my attention from the moment I lay eyes on it. A newspaper, a common item in this day and age seen on trains and in prisons alike hung on a wall, a deliberate tear through its middle like the layering of an onion's skin. The newspaper had been constructed by printing a number of Croydon's most recognisable high-rise towers within its pages and by tearing a rough but inspired hole through the middle to reveal the back page, a sky blue wash. In this moment we are being encouraged by Josh Mowbray the creator of this particular piece to come to terms with the reality that is the ensemble of empty spaces that exist within these sleepy concrete shells created from a commercial greed some decades previous. Although this newspaper may have an honest appearance, its grim reminder of the effects of development and progress is one ought to be taken seriously.

Ghost Town: The Hauntology of Croydon though a small exhibition, faced with the opportunity to over populate the room with images of menacing high-rise blocks and ominous memorandums choose a very concise and effective way of portraying its message regarding our built environment. The only minor shame was the lack of tactile interaction with the exhibition. Concrete being the main material point of focus creates throughout the exhibition a desire to touch and experience this grey matter both at a human and micro scale. The many prints and photographs of rough and polished concrete left me wanting to remind myself of this material experience once more, but perhaps this feeling was a result of the exhibitions success in being able to leave a lasting impression. This effect, deliberate or not, sets a new precedent for Croydon to begin an era of self reflection and evaluation towards its expansion, to set in place yet again heavy looking and independently acting towers or to begin encouraging an urban field of community and integration, either way this exhibition has begun to ask those questions.

tW