Hackney WickED Art Festival 2011 – review

Revellers flocked to the Hackney WickED Art Festival, 29-31 July. Photograph: Tim Sullivan

Spilling out of studios, flooding onto the canal and lining the streets, the fourth annual Hackey WickED Festival prised the lid off the artistic community and invited in the curious at the end of last month (29-31 July).

Installation pieces, yard sales and site-specific work threaded the festival throughout Wick, across Fish Island and up Eastway where Folly for a Flyover poked its wood-brick apex through the A12 intersection.

Something WickED this way comes: a view of the flea market and main stage from the platform at Hackney Wick station. Photograph: Tim Sullivan

Maintaining the festival’s authentic spirit in the hinterland of the shiny new Olympic stadium must have been a challenge, but it was one the organisers pulled off.

Rickety fire escapes, graffiti-strewn yards and warehouse spaces all retained a certain post-industrial rawness; with music pounding out of the main stage on Saturday evening as the overground roared ahead one visitor commented: “It feels like some sort of Gotham City rave.”

Photograph: Tim Sullivan

The festival spread into new domains too: Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery hosted I am Braziliality, combining the work of international artists with live performances and music; Practice Architecture’s The Yard created a new theatre in a converted warehouse, and Leo Cohen’s Kwick Love opened up a temporary exhibition space for a number of different artists.

Adrián Navarro, Ring Series, 2011 (detail). Photograph: Tim Sullivan

Anna-Louise Hale’s Headbox explored the relationship between exterior and interior space and Haruka Hashiguchi’s work with t-shirts and everyday objects played with form and space, something echoed in Adrián Navarro’s Ring Series pieces at 43 White Post Lane Studios.

Alex Chinneck, Fighting Fire With Ice Cream

Over at Schwartz Gallery, Sottoportego examined notions of value and ownership, whilst Fighting Fire With Ice Cream (Alex Chinneck, See Studios) reimagined construction materials with his twenty foot chimney bent around until it was self-smoking. White breeze blocks slowly moved in and out of a wall in In Order of Appearance, suggesting a changing landscape.

Russell Thoburn celebrated the area’s heritage with Parkesine, a floating sculpture of plastic bottle tops which referenced Alexander Parkes, former Wick resident and inventor of the first plastic.

Installation pieces along the canal tied the landscape into the festival and celebrated Wick’s unique character in the present, whilst Elevator Gallery’s regular The Tomorrow People looked to emerging talent of the future.

Future Shorts, Films on Fridges and Folly for a Flyover all kept the movies rolling with a mix of pieces filmed and focussed locally.

Salutes from two of the captains at the Coracle Regatta. Photograph: Tim Sullivan

Meanwhile a white rickshaw whizzed people around and ‘Guantanamo bunny’ kept a watchful eye on the hoards drinking beer in the sunshine outside the Pearl.  Sunday afternoon provided bright sunshine for the Coracle Regatta, bringing a feel of village fete fun to proceedings.  It rounded off a festival which reacted to and explored its setting with perspicacity, humour and just a dash of anarchy.