Category Archives: culture

Greengrassi/Corvi-Mora art gallery

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You could live in Kennington for decades and never happen across Kempsford Road. You could live on Kempsford Road and have no idea there’s an art gallery there. But there is – Greengrassi, AKA Corvi-Mora. Even the doorbell is hard to reach – presumably short people aren’t big art buyers.

Greengrassi AKA Corvi-Mora - kenningtonrunoff.com

If you can find the gallery, we recommend visiting between now and April 26th as the main room downstairs is showing Everything is about to happen, “an ongoing archive of artists’ books selected by Gregorio Magnani”.

Everything is about to happen at Corvi-Mora and Greengrassi - kenningtonrunoff.com

All the books and pamphlets are either self-published or from small publishers. So yes, what we’re talking about here is a load of art books by people you’ve never heard of, laid out on a huge wooden table. It’s much better than it sounds because so many of the books are intriguing and/or beautiful, like the room in which they’re displayed. 

books - Greengrassi, Corvi-Mora - Kenningtonrunoff.com

These books celebrate the mundane, cheap jokes, puns, sloganeering, and porn… all the classic themes of modern art are here. If you want to read them in depth you are supposed to take them into the reading station and don white gloves.

Greengrassi reading table - kenningtonrunoff.com

Or rubber gloves if you want to look at the top ones below (n.b. this next image is NSFW, unless you work in a modern art gallery or The Locker Room):

tennis and sex books - Greengrassi, Corvi-Mora - Kenningtonrunoff.com

Opening hours: 11am to 6pm Tuesday to Saturday

Address: 1A Kempsford Road (off Wincott Street), London SE11 4NU

Kennington guerrilla gardening

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The nice people at Kennington Flowers have made Kennington Cross even more colourful by planting flowers in the tree pit in front of St Anselm’s Church. Perhaps fuelled by Coffee Mob coffee, they’ve broken away from the staid confines of traditional garden design and gone for something akin to a Skittles spillage:

Treepit flowers at Kennington Cross by Tomorrow's People - kenningtonrunoff.com

While we’re on the subject of guerrilla gardening, would anyone like to claim responsibility for the cyclamen in the tree pits further up Kennington Road? North Kennington is home to the founder of GuerrillaGardening.org Richard Reynolds (Britain’s 24th most influential gardener), but we’re assured these cyclamen are not his handy work.

Anyway, well done everyone – keep planting.

Lambeth Walk

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Lambeth Walk was immortalised in a music hall song from 1937. When the song was written, 159 shops lined the street and catered for every need, including eleven butchers, two eel and pie shops (one with a tank of live eels outside), a bird dealer and a tripe dresser. To read about the history of the street, go here or to this site which has some great old photos and maps, dating back to a time when it was surrounded by fields.

While the street declined in the second half of the last century, it’s on its way up again, along with the rest of North West Kennington, with lots of cool, creative businesses opening up nearby such as architects, a violin maker, a poetry school, pop up bars, and of course Damien Hirst’s new gallery coming soon.

Here’s the former Pelham Mission Hall, now the Henry Moore Sculpture Studio which is part of Morley (adult education) College:

The Pelham Mission Hall, Henry Moore Sculpture Studio - kenningtonrunoff.com

On the left of the photo, on the first floor, you can see the outdoor pulpit, once used to offer two-for-one perfumes to the market-goers below in exchange for their attendance at church.

(Incidentally, there’s a Henry Moore sculpture on display close to Kennington, in the middle of the Brandon Estate.)

Lambeth Walk’s other great surviving building is the former Lambeth Baths, which since 1971 has been the Lambeth Walk Group Practice award winning GP surgery (who knew that there were awards for GP surgeries?):

Lambeth Walk Group Practice - kenningtonrunoff.com

Bonnington Cafe

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Bonnington Cafe has been a mainstay of Bonnington Square since the squatters moved in in the early 1980s. At that time, many of the houses didn’t have functioning kitchens, so members of the community took turns to cook for each other in the communal cafe, using ingredients either bought from or scavenged from the nearby Covent Garden food market.

Bonnington Square Cafe - kenningtonrunoff.com

The cafe still operates in this way, run as a co-operative, with a different chef cooking every day, but it’s now open the wider public as well, and it’s a truly magical place to spend an evening. Needless to say, the food can be a little hit and miss depending who’s cooking, and there are generally just two choices of starter, main course, and dessert, all vegetarian and some vegan. But the food is cheap, it’s BYOB with no corkage charge, and the atmosphere is invariably great, with candles, occasional live music, a wood fire on cold nights, and above all, a real sense of community (the cafe doubles as a community centre). Just don’t ask for the “special stuff”.

Here’s a video about the Bonnington Square squatters, including plenty about the cafe (thanks to @taxbod for the link):

Meditation at the Jamyang Buddhist Centre

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Happy new year.

Are you starting the new year in need of spiritual sustenance? Get yourself down to the Jamyang Buddhist Centre on Renfrew Road in North Kennington, one of two Buddhist centres in Kennington with a third one on the way in the former Beaufoy Institute.

On January 6th from 7.30pm till 9pm is one of Jamyang’s regular Introduction to Meditation sessions. We’ve been to one of these sessions before. What can we tell you about it?

– You’ll have to take your shoes off.
– It’s not a brazen attempt to convert you to Buddhism – Buddha barely got a mention.
– There are opportunities to ask questions. Someone else asked the question we should have asked – how to stay awake during meditation? The instructor did provide some practical suggestions but also said it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep, at which point we nodded off.
– They do a nice quiche and salad in the cafe during the day.
– It’s free but donations are welcome.
– Meditation is scientifically proven to boost concentration, reduce stress, depression, anxiety and addictive behaviours, and can even help with physical problems like heart disease and chronic pain (sorry we can’t lay our hands on the scientific proof right now).

So, all in all, an ideal opportunity to have a look around the Buddhist centre – which has a nice, welcoming vibe whatever your religious beliefs – and to try napping meditation.

Read about the history of the building – and old courthouse – here.

Jamyang Buddhist Centre - kenningtonrunoff.com

The Courtyard Cafe, featuring a Buddha in a glass cage made from pure Nepalese gold:

The Courtyard Cafe at Jamyang Buddhist Centre - kenningtonrunoff.com

Winter Screen

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The spirit of the pleasure gardens is seeping back into West Kennington, if not quite reaching the decadent heights of its prime when Duchesses (including Georgiana of Keira Knightley fame), Princes and other notables – including Samuel Johnson, Handel and Dickens – would flounce around what is now Spring Gardens in hot air balloon races, watch cats dropping by parachute, and marvel at the Lilliputian King in the human zoo.

Spring Gardens was also the setting for a series of summer film screenings earlier this year, such a success that they are being reprised this week in the arches of Vauxhall station with a festive Christmas theme. Complementing the Winter Screen series is a Christmas market dishing up mulled wine or cider to raise your body temperature before you sit down, and blankets to keep you from going numb while you watch the film. We are hoping that local author Will Self will honour the spirit of Dickens and Thackeray and the original pleasure gardens and settle in to watch Elf with a mega bucket of popcorn.

Full programme:

December 2013

  • Thursday 12th – Miracle on 34th street (7pm)
  • Friday 13th – Elf (7pm)
  • Saturday 14th – A Muppets Christmas Carol (2pm) Scrooged (7pm)
  • Sunday 15th – Home Alone 1 (2pm) Home Alone 2 (7pm)

MK II:

vauxhall-pleasure-gardens

 

MK I:

458px-Vauxhall_Garden_edited

 

Ticket proceeds are going to  ‘Thames Reach’, a charity who operate a local homeless shelter.

Location:

Arch 50

South Lambeth Place opposite Starbucks

London SW8 1SP

Cable Bar & Café

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The South Kennington end of Brixton Road in is becoming a haven for food and drink lovers. There’s the Oval Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, plus some very good delis and restaurants which we’ll write about soon. Best of all for hot drinks and extended visits is Cable Bar & Café, from the people behind the Scootercaffe on Lower Marsh in Waterloo – a cafe so cool it wouldn’t be out of place on Redchurch Street or in The Marais in Paris.

Cable Cafe bar - kenningtonrunoff.com

Cable, which used to be a greasy spoon, has a similar aesthetic to the Scootercaffe, which used to sell scooters, with vintage furniture, exposed brickwork, a poster for North by Northwest, a playlist featuring Edith Piaf, Françoise Hardy and the Velvet Underground, and live music on Tuesdays (jazz, bop, bluegrass – that kind of thing). Bands playing the nearby Brixton Academy gravitate here after soundcheck, so if you see someone who looks like they’re in Gogol Bordello or Lamb of God, they probably are.

Moka sign in Cable Cafe & Bar - kenningtonrunoff.com

Their coffee is top notch and food-wise they offer a selection of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and cakes. The Evening Standard have been breathlessly promoting West Kennington for some time now, which stretched to this South Kennington spot not long after it opened.

Cable Bar & Cafe coffee machines and wall mural - kenningtonrunoff.com

They also have a piano:

Cable Cafe & Bar piano - kenningtonrunoff.com

 

Cable Bar & Café

8 Brixton Rd, London SW9 6BU
020 8617 9629