Silvertown
SILVERTOWN (spreads from book)
Published by Pure Land Press – Available from www.purelandpress.net
All texts, photographs, book design etc: Allan Parker
SILVERTOWN explores the psychogeography of an extensive and spectacular ruin which once occupied over 500 acres of the north bank of the River Thames. Part narrative, part prose-poem, the text explores the passage of time through the complete disappearance of a site which once accommodated one of the engines of the colonial project. Badly damaged during the War, the site became a film location until its eventual re-invention as a retail park. The images, which span over 25 years, are accompanied by a text which references Borges, Starobinski, Calvino and Satre, who assist in transforming an aggregation of images and themes into a place that now exists only as an imaginary landscape, through which history and fantasy can be re-ignited at will.
“Like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the site seemed possessed of a magical power to recreate the past of its visitors.
As there are few records of the place, or even accounts of it, it lingers in the imagination of those who witnessed it, a private atlas miraculously populated from memory.
Images, artefacts and narratives with links to other histories took up residence within the image of its crumbling façades. Every fragment from the site provided a link, like the imagined volumes in Borges’ Library, to all possible stories—originating from a geographical place that had lost its moorings and slipped into another realm, pursuing an afterlife at once easily recalled, but in any practical sense, unreachable.”
Silvertown is an umbrella project with a number of outcomes including the 72 page book above.
More details are available at: https://www.purelandpress.net/silvertown/
A residency at Hampi and JSW Steelworks for students in India inspired by the book.
Includes an exhibition at Srishti Institute of Art And Technology:
https://www.allanforresterparker.co.uk/teaching/silvertown-srishti-india/
A number of framed works and prints including these chip paintings made from paint chips found on the banks of the river Thames.
