This exhibition project is informed by print archives from the Museum of London, the Metropolitan Archives and the Foundling Museum, and by the online digital library British History Online. The title of the exhibition is taken from TS Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton (The Four Quartets), where time is represented as not fixed and rational but mercurial and mysterious. Building on this idea, the fictional/documentary imagery of ‘Present in the Past’ explores the idea of passing time in the regenerated landscape of contemporary King’s Cross London where primary research was made, using on site photography and drawing.
Playing with memory and the ghosts of past communities, the historical prints are drawn over and their narrative content altered and erased. The resulting drawings form a ‘conversation’ with the earlier artist - offering a subversive response to the original stories while replacing them with new ones which hold significant relevance to the contemporary community of King’s Cross.
The expression of time and memory through narrative is influenced the writings of WG Sebald (Austerlitz) and TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton.