Drop in to the Gallery for Spoken Vinyl, an Open Night with Pearl Home Records, the record label for DIY experimental music, sound art and spoken word.

Learn about record cutting with a vinyl lathe demo, take part in open mic, create record covers using photo collage, hear spoken word performances by Dominique & Nik, AKA SILKess Demon, Graham Clifford and Ruth Wiggins, and hear a special sound art playlist throughout the evening.

• 6.45pm – 7.00pm – Vinyl lathe demo
• 7.00pm – 8.00pm – Poetry open mic (approx. 10 slots – sign up at front door)
• 8.15pm –8.30pm – Sound art/spoken word by Dom and Nik AKA SILKess Demon
• 8.30pm – 9.00pm – Poetry sets by Graham Clifford & Ruth Wiggins
• 6-00pm – 9.00pm –  Special sound art playlist and record cover collage making

Deeney’s Café will be open for organic beers, wines, snacks and other refreshments.

William Morris Gallery is excited to be part of this year’s William Morris Design Line, which shines a light on the richness of Waltham Forest’s past and present creative community and encourages visitors to discover, learn and interact with an incredible range of design, making and creative activity.

The William Morris Design Line was created by Wood Street Walls in 2020, as part of the Local Trust’s Creative Civic Change Programme in collaboration with William Morris Big Local. It helped establish a community-led design route through Walthamstow as part of London Design Festival.  The 2024 edition, programmed in partnership with Waltham Forest Council, will extend to Lea Bridge for the first time to showcase designers and makers across the Argall Industrial Area. It is a Design District for London Design Festival 2024.

Artist biographies

Dominique and Nik co-run Pearl Home Records (founded in 2018), which is a small record label producing vinyl records of spoken word combined with sound art and art house music by various artists. Nik has reconditioned a rare record lathe machine that is able to cut into vinyl and produce a mono quality sound. In addition to hand made vinyl Pearl Home Records broadcast radio shows on Repeater Radio and organise various artist showcase evenings. They also facilitate ‘The Booth of Truth’ which is a portable workshop installation in which participants can record straight to vinyl. Dominique’s visual art is incorporated into the Pearl Home Records aesthetic whilst Nik operates the lathe as well as producing and mastering artists’ works. They are also performers in their own right, currently exploring the intersection of sound art and spoken word. They have previously created folk art in Jesus Licks and country art pop in SILKess Demon. They have worked with The Tate, The Southbank Centre, Blackhorse Road Workshops and Artillery for the Walthamstow Garden Party.

Graham Clifford was born in Portsmouth and grew up in Wiltshire. He studied Fine Art at the Swindon College of Art and Design, then at Middlesex University. At the University of East Anglia, he was awarded a master’s in creative writing. His first, award winning pamphlet collection is Welcome Back to the Country, 2011, published by Seren. Followed by his full-length collection The Hitting Game, in 2014, again by Seren. In January 2017, the Black Light Engine Room published Computer Generated Crash Test Dummies. March 2019, Against the Grain published Well. In Charge of the Gun was the follow up and most recent collection by The Black Light Engine Room in 2021. Graham also produced a poetry single with Pearl Home Records in 2019, featuring selected poems from Well. He currently lives in East London with his partner and two daughters.

Ruth Wiggins is a British poet. She is based in East London but is happiest in the great outdoors, something which deeply informs her work. Her poetry and essays have been published internationally, and her debut collection, The Lost Book of Barkynge was published by Shearsman in 2023 – this lyric history of Barking Abbey is told through the eyes of the women that lived there and has been described as ‘doing for poetry what Wolf Hall did for fiction.’ Ruth also has three pamphlets: Myrtle (Emma Press, 2014); a handful of string (Paekakariki Press, 2020); and Menalhyl (a private letterpress edition of earlier poems, 2023). In 2023 she produced a double single with Pearl Home Records entitled Holy Loaf which included spoken word extracts from The Lost Book of Barkynge.