“Ballad of a Lost City is a dark and poetic meditation on construction, abandonment, decay and regeneration across Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and

the wider City of London. It’s a piece that treads the line between documentary and dystopia, layering evocative post-industrial imagery with tropical

plant life and beguiling narration.”
                                                                                                                                                                          - Phoebe Cawley - Aesthetica Magazine
 

A site specific installation developed for the Handbag Factory in Vauxhall, South London, 'Ballad of a Lost City' brings together video, sound, painting, text and print works as part of a research project with Critical Edge Collective.

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Engaging with the cyclical histories of construction, abandonment, decay and regeneration at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and the City of London, these works explore London through the dual lenses of history and science-fiction. Layering footage of Vauxhall’s post-industrial architecture with tropical plants from the nearby Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, the works imagine a future where vegetation reclaims the city.

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The sound-installation takes a composition by Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ resident composer James Hook (1746-1827) and slows the score down by a factor of 250, representing each year between the piece’s initial performance at the gardens and this exhibition. At this speed, the lively Baroque piece becomes an almost static wall of sound filled with the synthetic tension of a science-fiction soundtrack. Combined with the layered images, this work speculatively explores the past, present and future psycho-geographies of the land where the Handbag Factory now stands.