Here’s artist Ian Rawlinson next to an image that we’ve just acquired for the ArtsLink123 collection in our offices. The show, called Vessel, is on at Williams Art, Cambridge and has had several interesting write-ups in Cambridge News, A World to Win and Slate the Disco.
The image shows a partly decayed map of the Kite area of Cambridge, which is where our offices are. Significant parts of the area were levelled in the 1980s to make way for the Grafton Shopping Centre, something a lot of people still find unforgivable.
Ian has found layers of meaning in the re-written map, the lost and the surviving street names.
I’m also aware that when the first houses, shops and pubs, etc. were being built here in the early 19th century that there was stiff opposition to this invasion of the green spaces — so nothing changes really.
As with language change, you can try to resist it, but it’s probably going to roll right on anyway, whatever you think on’t, you dig?
Language Testing 123: Blog 