RiverView

A river divides territory and is at once a way in and a way out, where tidal shifts push and pull one's desires to go and explore the beyond, while old loyalties hold onto the past weighing down one's need to escape.
Shot in 16mm, black and white film, echoing artist John Latham’s work Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1971, utilizing in-camera split screen and double exposure to explore ideas of psychogeography and synchronicity.
The tower block became synonymous with urban decay, social isolation and the failure of utopian modernist optimism. An aspiration where every home would have a river-view in a multi class society, quickly falls into stark contrast with the image of bleak discordant and plain modular functionalism aligned with the lost ambitions of social housing. Decay follows optimism as memories follow events, as predictable as the tides, yet has also given rise to a second life existing in the creations of film and television.
The Thamesmead estate in South East London was built in 1968 in brutalist concrete architecture and placed at the margins of the city. Named after the river, proclaiming its connection to the heart of the metropolitan centre and out to the rest of the world.