Free exhibition of photographs by Marion Davies and Debra Rapp documenting the industrial and craft businesses of the Lea Valley before the 2012 Olympic Games.
Dispersal is on at V&A East Museum this weekend, running Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October. It's a photographic exhibition that looks at the industrial side of East London, and it's free to enter.
The work comes from a specific moment in the city's recent history. Between 2005 and 2007, photographers Marion Davies and Debra Rapp spent two years documenting the trades and businesses of the Lea Valley, in the stretch between Stratford and Hackney Wick. They ended up with an archive of 80 businesses, and the range of what they found is a good part of the appeal: belt-making and zinc galvanising sit alongside salmon smoking, with the surrounding landscape filling in the gaps. The colour photographs are all by Rapp, and the black-and-whites are all by Davies, so you can tell who was behind each shot as you go through.
There's a reason the archive exists. The relocations were forced by the 2012 Olympic Games, which moved 284 trades and businesses out of the area. The exhibition frames that gradual erasure as part of a wider global trend, and asks how to revive industries and cultures of making while still supporting new creative practices. It's less about nostalgia and more about what happens to a place when its making is moved on.
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It's housed in the room at the top of the building, on Level 3, and sits within V&A East, the group's sixth museum, which is dedicated to creativity's power to bring change. The museum is at 107 Carpenters Rd, London, E20 2AR. It's open from 10:00 to 17:45 on both days, and entry is free.
