Visionhire – Anna Best Archive

I utilised Visionhire (a redundant TV hire shop) as the work’s title because I liked the fact that there were all these diverse political visions flying around and there was huge discourse going on, none of which seemed to be very visionary.

The context was the selling off of council homes. Lambeth Walk, the Ethelred Estate where residents were fighting to have a say in how the estate was owned and managed. I was invited by Naomi Siderfin to make an intervention and as a Vauxhall resident felt able to get involved. What is an artist to do? Often my first question, as well as everyone else’s, is to ask the people who are there all the time – “Brighten the place up” was a telling and frequent answer. That is maybe the artist’s role in society. My research project was a performance of sorts, satirising the surveys and tick box questionnaires which seem to define our future.

Visionhire was part of an exhibition at Beaconsfield called GLEAN. I was invited to make a new piece of work in Lambeth Walk, which is just parallel with the gallery. I spent maybe a month or 6 weeks going down to Lambeth Walk every day – I live round the corner so it was very possible to do that – researching, talking to all the people that I could, mainly shopkeepers, and finding out what was going on there. What was going on was discussion of the political issues around regeneration, linked to the privatisation of council housing and new housing association developments. Lambeth Walk had been redeveloped in the 70s and it is a shopping arcade with pedestrian bridges spanning the walk and this architecture — hence the mirror balls hung from the bridges each day for a month — a reference to the retro-glamour potential of the 70s architecture. Rupert had talked about how it could be such a groovy place to live if it were promoted that way. Incidentally, a couple of years ago someone opened a fabulous retro shop selling everything from glass lamps to telephones, located between Joy’s grocer and Ozzie’s café.

But the area had been left to go to wrack and ruin. Now there was a move to pull it all down and start again and essentially half of Lambeth Walk didn’t want this to happen and half did. What’s weird is that half has been pulled down and new developments built and half is the old 70s bit, which make sense, because it’s connected to the big council estate, which very actively fought off the privatisation plot called ‘The Vauxhall Project’.

I was trying to occupy the Visionhire TV shop on Lambeth Walk for the period of the show, to present everything I was gathering — photographs of the flats in question, lots of paper work and information from various people. In the end I was able to use an empty Gas Showroom next door. For the period of the exhibition at Beaconsfield, on the parallel street, I opened the showroom up and displayed a lot of photos and related information. It became a drop-in centre for local activists and campaigners and people that had something to say about the area. Funnily enough it was next to the Vauxhall Project – Regeneration Partnership who were the target of much of the disaffection. It then became the local Sure Start drop-in.

Throughout the period of the show, I employed a man to stand in the walk with a blackboard on which anyone could write what they wanted, a sort of multi-vocal or undogmatic placard . I produced a broadsheet that was distributed free with the local Regeneration News. It contained interviews with the various dissenting voices of some of people on Lambeth Walk.

Date

1998

Part of GLEAN, Beaconsfield, London
Lambeth Walk

Naomi Siderfin And David Crawforth at Beaconsfield
Peter and Chris at Lambeth Walk Partnership
Jane Sutton
Nigel Simpson
Giles at St Peters Heritage Centre
Lambeth Walk Steering Group
Fred Peters at Ethelred Youth Club
G. Wilkins
Dider Tickell
Mrs Bush
Mr Halil
Rose
Philip of the Paradise Steel Band
Robert Beard
Mr Randall
Jackie Fitzgerald
Joy
Elvis and Rhodalyn
Rupert Carey
Miikka Makinen
Caroline Todd
M. Collins
Albert
Ella Gibbs and belt
Mike at Design For Print
Richard and Pregnant
Brendan at Insight Lighting

Media

Performance research
Photographs
Video footage
Broadsheet publication
paraphernalia
Sculpture, textile mirror balls made by Jane Sutton