Special curator-led tour of Art Without Heroes: Mingei

TOURS

Thursday 25 July 2024

See the exhibition with one of our curators as your guide.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Image: From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

Special curator-led tour of Art Without Heroes: Mingei

TOURS

Thursday 27 June 2024

See the exhibition with one of our curators as your guide.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Image: Bowl, Raku type earthenware with clear glaze over decoration painted in enamel colours, Japan, Tokyo, by Tomimoto Kenkichi, 1912. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Special curator-led tour of Art Without Heroes: Mingei

TOURS

Thursday 16 May 2024

See the exhibition with one of our curators as your guide.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Image: Six-fold screen, stencilled and resist-dyed silk on a wooden frame showing a map of Okinawa, by Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984), Japan, ca.1940. © Serizawa Keiko. Victoria and Albert Museum

Special curator-led tour of Art Without Heroes: Mingei

TOURS

Thursday 25 April 2024

See the exhibition with one of our curators as your guide.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Image: Bowl, Kawai Kanjiro. © National Museums Scotland 

A woman reading at a workshop

Creative Writing Workshop & Book Club

With Waltham Forest Twinning Association

WORKSHOPS

Saturday 16 March 2024

Waltham Forest Twinning Association is holding monthly Creative Writing & Book Club workshops at the Gallery in 2024.

Participants are asked to bring their life experiences from the British, African Caribbean diaspora and Northeast London. These experiences will be shared through spoken and written word, leading to performance and publication opportunities. Creative writing will be followed by a book club ‘with a difference’ where you can discuss and share your favourite books. For all ages.

Facilitator: Jane Ulysses Grell – storyteller, author

Times: 12-2.30pm Creative Writing Workshop, 3-4pm Book Club ‘with a difference’

Where: Acanthus Room, William Morris Gallery

Travel: You are encouraged to use public transport, such as bus 123 or the 34, 97, 215, 275, 357 or SL1 to Bell Corner. Walthamstow Central and Blackhorse Road (Victoria Line) are the nearest tube stations.

Film Screening & Discussion

Telling our Story & The iD Project

FILM

Saturday 9 March 2024

Visit William Morris Gallery for the screening of three films in the Gallery’s Acanthus room on the top floor of the building. The screenings will be followed by a discussion, allowing you the opportunity to share your thoughts and experiences of the subjects raised in the films.

Two short films:

12-30-12.40pm – ‘Telling Our Hurricane Irma Story’ (2019) – Barbuda,10 minutes. The Be Foundation

Trustees from Barbudan based International NGO The Be Foundation, share their Category 5 Hurricane Irma stories in a frank and honest short film, also exposing why they are so passionate about the future of their tiny island in the Caribbean called Barbuda.

12.50-1pm – ‘Telling our Hurricane Maria Story ‘ (2018) – Dominica, 8 minutes. The Waltham Forest Twinning Association

Members and friends of the WF Twinning Association share their stories in a moving short film which captures some of their experiences when they were in Dominica as Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck.

Followed by:

1.15-2.30pm – ‘The iD Project – My Dominica Story’ (2019) – by Richard Etienne. 1 hour. Everyone has a Story to tell

“On the week that marks 15 years since my paps’ passing, I want to gift you the film that was inspired by the great man. I give to you: The iD Project – My Dominica Story”. The multiple award-winning documentary.

Rest in eternal peace – Richard Etienne Snr. 1953-2004

About the Film:
Travel to the beautiful island of Dominica as one British man documents his journey of discovery and identity. Through a captivating narrative, he explores the birthplace of his late father and delves into the rich cultural heritage of Dominica.

About the Director:
Richard Etienne is a British filmmaker and videographer best known for his work as the official videographer to UK Prime Minister Theresa May (2016-19). His debut film ‘The iD Project’ won the Film Reel Award at the 2019 Caribe Film Festival and Best Documentary at the 2019 British Urban Film Festival.

Blue cyanotype image of two swans, with water and trees in background

Film Night: Radical Landscapes

SPECIAL EVENTS

Thursday 8 February 2024

Join us for the resurgence of Film Night at William Morris Gallery, showcasing four films by independent filmmakers who each explore the themes of the natural world as a space for artistic inspiration, spiritual connection, and political and cultural explorations.

Great Sale Wood (2024) – Michaela Davis

A short, animated film crafted through the sustainable process of cyanotype, featuring over 2,800 hand-printed frames. Shot around Highams Park Lake, the film explores themes of ecology and climate crisis. A study of interconnected beauty in nature, the film contains a score featuring digitally manipulated audio recordings of the lake.

2:02 mins

The Land we Seek the Land we Dream (2022) – Fourthland

Fourthland’s film is a deep remembrance of, ‘the first story´, performed through various acts in the landscape and a conversation between a group of cross-cultural and intergenerational hands. This piece is an invitation to feel ourselves as part of nature. The main elements of the piece are filmed on and around Leyton Marshes.

17 mins (including meditative piece)

OCAK (2020) –  Zeynep Kaserci

OCAK offers an intimate portrait of a family harvesting hazelnuts, where questions of labour, gender, family, and love come to the fore. With its observational cinematography and unhurried editing style, it offers glimpses into the daily life in rural north-eastern Turkey and explores peoples’ connection to land and their hazelnut gardens, which have been inherited for generations. In Turkish with English subtitles.

28:20 mins

Effigy for a Black Soldier / Protector of the Children (2022) – Maya Campbell

Effigy for a Black Soldier uses a reworking of the folk song Wayfaring Stranger as a storytelling device to explore memories of the artist’s estranged father, who served in the British Army and had a strong Christian faith. This meditates on the complexities that come with being a black man in service of the British Army, suggesting themes of migration, longing for home and the lingering phantom of the British Empire on the diaspora. The unnamed location suggests borders, emphasised by the dynamic presence of the sea and watery interlude that follows.

Protector of the Children alludes to the Nepali folklore figure of the Lahkey, who is said to be a man-eating demon who protects children and townspeople, dwelling deep in the forests of Nepal. The work draws from the artist’s early encounter with the Lahkey mask, when placed into her grandmother’s care at the age of four, and is an intimate video-performance filmed during the artist’s residency at Space A in Kathmandu, Nepal, exploring walking as a methodology to build connection with ancestral land.

10:32 mins

 Image: Still from ‘Great Sale Wood’ Michaela Davis, 2024

Woman stands outside next to a shed in an alotment space.

Waltham Forest: A Radical Landscape

Talk and private view

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Wednesday 31 January 2024

Join us for a special event bringing together our Radical Landscapes commissioned artists: Abel Holsborough, Zaiba Jabbar and Graeme Miller. The event will include a panel discussion followed by a private view of the Radical Landscapes exhibition. The artists will be exploring how their memories and experiences of Waltham Forest and home have influenced the social sculptures that they have created across the borough.

  • 6pm – doors open
  • 6.30pm – panel discussion followed by Q&A
  • 8.30pm – private view of Radical Landscapes

About the artists: 

Abel Holsborough 

Abel is an artist who uses photography, writing and performance to explore the un-monumental and question what constitutes ‘useful’ art. Their interest in obscure histories and ‘not-quite’ archives also feeds into their work at Brixton Windmill where they are the lead miller of the last working windmill in London. Their collaborative works with organisations such as Artsadmin (Artist in Residence 2023/24), Grizedale Arts and Create London often link to ideas of home, place-making and community. 

Commission: Small Things Are Possible 

Zaiba Jabbar 

Zaiba is an award-winning director, moving image artist, commissioner, independent curator and Founder of HERVISIONS. She’s interested in the democratisation and accessibility by how we experience art outside the white cube. Her curatorial project HERVISIONS is an investigation into how people in the margins are using technology to create art outside of traditional formats, making space for themselves through the experience of expanded moving image. She is a leader in augmented reality and digital art exhibitions online and offline working with partners and institutes that include Tate Modern, LUX, i-D, Google Arts and Culture, IAMSOUND, The London College of Fashion, Loom Festival, Spectacles, arebyte, Furtherfield and The Photographers Gallery. Zaiba was curator in residence at LUX in (2018) and a board member of Abandon Normal Devices. 

Commission by HERVISIONS: Wild Wired! Rewilding Encounters of Langthorne Park

Graeme Miller 

Graeme Miller is an artist, composer and performance-maker working internationally across a wide range of media from radio to gallery installation and is known for his sited, performative social works. 

His practice emerged from UK performance of the 1980s as the co-founder of the influential theatre company Impact Theatre Co-operative. While continuing to make his own stage works that include A Girl Skipping (1990), he evolved a wide-ranging practice as an artist. He makes work that often responds to ideas about place and time, creating situational pieces that shift the attention in his audience. He also composes music and designs sound for theatre, dance, TV and film and is Associate Artist Tutor on the MA Performance Making Course at Goldsmiths University, London.  

Graeme lived for a decade in artists housing in Leyton between 1984 and 1994. His family home ended up in the epicentre of the protests to stop the M11 Motorway and was one of the final houses to be demolished for its construction. His radio work LINKED has broadcast in the area since 2003. 

Commission: LINKED

Please ‘pay what you can’ for your ticket. Our suggested donation is £7.50.

Image: Abel Holsborough

In Conversation with Veronica Ryan

TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

Thursday 18 January 2024

We are proud to be welcoming Veronica Ryan in a discussion about her extraordinary career and the themes and motivations around her work. Ryan won last year’s Turner Prize for her solo exhibition Along a Spectrum at Spike Island, works from which are included in our current exhibition Radical Landscapes, and for her public sculptures celebrating the Windrush Generation in Hackney. Her sculptures and installations examine environmental concerns, personal narratives and memories, as well as the wider psychological implications of history, trauma and recovery.  A former resident of Leyton, Ryan last showed work at the William Morris Gallery in a group show  ‘E11 Works on Paper’ in the 1980s and we are very proud to see her return.

The artist will be joined in conversation with Hadrian Garrard, Director of the William Morris Gallery, co-curator of Radical Landscapes. Garrard worked previously with Ryan, leading the Hackney Windrush Commissions as Director of Create London. The event will be followed by an audience Q&A.

  • 6.30pm – Doors open
  • 7pm – Talk and Q&A
  • 8pm – Radical Landscapes curator’s tour

Please ‘pay what you can’ for your ticket. Our suggested donation is £7.50.

Image: Veronica Ryan. Photographed by Erdem Moralioglu for Harper’s Bazaar

Moon at night through the trees

William Morris Gallery & The Hive present: Nightwalk

With Misery

OFF SITE

Saturday 17 February 2024

Inspired by social movements such as Right to Roam, Reclaim the Night and the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, William Morris Gallery and The Hive present Nightwalk, an evening packed full of outdoor and creative activities.

The event begins at Chingford Station, where participants join our invited walking group guides to ramble through Epping Forest to reach The Hive Climate and Environment Education Centre – in the middle of the forest. We’ll be joined by Epping Forest Heritage Trust guides as well as the GEM Family Hike group for this journey.

At The Hive, a range of activities will be on offer both indoors and outdoors. The Hive will be offering fire pit building, bushcraft and other nocturnal animal inspired activities. Sober club night and mental health collective, Misery, will be taking over The Lodge and the historic Suntrap building for music performances and creative workshops, all inspired by the local landscape and history of Epping Forest.

Enjoy food and drink from The Gleaners Community Cafe  throughout the night. Normally based at the Hornbeam Centre, The Gleaners is a community cafe that uses surplus produce — quality ingredients that would otherwise go to waste — to make tasty, plant-based meals.

Timings:

4pm – 5pm Walk from Chingford Station to The Hive, Epping Forest

5pm – 8pm Music, performances, and activities for all (5pm – 6pm family friendly)

6pm – 7pm Option for younger audiences to walk back to Chingford station

8pm – 9pm Walk back from The Hive, Epping Forest, to Chingford Station

 

About Misery

Misery is a playful mental health collective and sober rave led by and for queer, trans, intersex, people of colour with lived experience of madness, addiction, disability, trauma, and neurodivergence. we co-create accessible sober spaces, services, practices and resources to cultivate communities of care that can support and sustain the collective healing and resilience of queer, trans, intersex Black, indigenous and people of colour. misery is a reminder that you’re not too sensitive, it’s mad out here.

Since early 2022, Misery has run monthly, in-person, plant magic gatherings called ‘misery medicine’ which have seen hundreds of QTIBPOC gather in green spaces across London. Guided by community herbalists, we learn about the medicinal properties of the plants that grow freely around us, communally forage and make tea and tinctures, and engage in healing art practices held by the nature around us.

@miseryparty

 

About The Hive

The Hive (previously Suntrap) has been offering environmental education for over 50 years at a beautiful, inspiring location in Epping Forest. The Hive is dedicated to fostering a deep understanding of the environment and its intricate connections with the climate. Through immersive experiences, hands-on activities, and expert guidance, The Hive seeks to empower individuals of all ages to become informed stewards of the Earth.  Their aim is to inspire curiosity, instill awareness, and encourage sustainable actions that positively impact the planet through interactions with the natural world in the beautiful environment of Epping Forest.

@hiveintheforest

 

Our walking guides and groups

The Epping Forest Heritage Trust is a charity and a membership organisation with a big mission to inspire people about Epping Forest, and to conserve and protect its irreplaceable biodiversity, culture and heritage now and for generations to come. It operates across the whole of Epping Forest, covering 6,000 acres stretching from Manor Park in East London to Epping in Essex.

www.efht.org.uk

The GEM Family Hike is a monthly walking group, created as a way of connecting Global Ethnic Majority families and enjoying nature together. The group meets on the first Sunday of the month to explore Walthamstow Marshes and Wetland.

@gemfamilyhike

 

Image: by Neven Kremarek

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