Solid Turbulence is a photographic and audio project by artist Anthony Lam, developed with the residents of three neighbouring tower blocks, close to Shadwell Station. Lam grew up in nearby Limehouse, and the project has evolved out of a close familiarity with Shadwell, an area which has experienced extensive regeneration and growth in recent years.

Lam has long been interested in East End narratives: the optimism, hope and realities of the diverse communities who have for hundreds of years settled in the East End. Historically an area of extreme poverty and social deprivation, philanthropists and social reformers such as Arnold Toynbee and Samuel Barnett in the nineteenth century sought to transform the lives of families and communities through the provision of improved housing and education.

Working with the current residents of Luke House, Winterton House and the new-build Kelday Heights, Lam invited individuals to record their perspectives on the recent regeneration of the area and what it means for the community. His artwork examines the politics and poetics of communal space, contrasting the ideologies of past social reformers and urban planners with the realities of contemporary life in Shadwell.

Focusing on the experience of tower-dwellers in both the new high rise and the older municipal housing stock, Lam encouraged residents to explore in their own words the reality of Utopian monuments of social planning and order, the sense of community and urban density within Shadwell, and the contemporary dream of belonging to a regenerated ‘future space’.

His first pair of large back-lit photographs were on display in the station throughout 2008-9. Presenting an image of the ‘new dawn’, shot looking skyward from the window of one of the tower blocks, the photograph evoked both an everyday gesture and a metaphor for hope and looking to the future. Presenting the same image in positive and negative/inverted form, he conveyed the contrasting aspects of social relations and individual perceptions of status: the co-existance of opposites in the ideals and realities of communities and individuals.

The second series of photographs, currently on show at the station, take the opposite view, being grounded literally within the roots of the community. One image depicts the desire path made by locals on the landscaped ‘pocket green’, created by individuals choosing to take the shortest - or most direct - route between two points. The second image, of a small tree pictured in state of reawakening from Winter, calls to mind the ‘Tree of Life’, the symbol of Toynbee Hall, and serves as a reminder of the principles of earlier social reformers who worked to bring about significant change in British urban society. Lam’s images show how in a densely urban environment, nature survives to establish its place, and individuals come together to create new paths and networks outside the planned social order.

To listen to residents of Luke House, Winterton House and Kelday Heights talking about their experience of life in Shadwell click here

Footnotes/links
Samuel A. Barnett (1844-1917) was a social reformer and co-founder of Toynbee Hall, the first university settlement in the East End, designed to significantly improve the poorest of London’s neighbourhoods and change urban British society for the better, through education and social reform. Toynbee Housing Association was created in 1962 to improve housing conditions for people living in East London, and led the development of the latest highrise building, Kelday Heights in Shadwell.