Bedrock’s 15th birthday party at Fire

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Nowadays, as readers of this blog will realise, we like nothing better than to spend our evenings visiting the pubs, restaurants, art galleries and yoga centres of Kennington. But once upon a time, a night out for Kennington Runoff might have involved a trip to a nightclub – and one of our favourite club nights for its amazing atmosphere was John Digweed’s Bedrock. Back then, Bedrock took place at Heaven in Charing Cross, but like many of London’s more adrenaline-fuelled club nights, it has since relocated to West Kennington. Bedrock celebrate their 15th anniversary this Saturday at West Kennington’s own superclub Fire with a seven hour set from Mr Digweed himself. We won’t be attending – the only place we’d spend seven hours for entertainment nowadays is a test match at the Oval – but we’re sure it will “go off” as the kids may or may not still say. If you haven’t got a ticket, get down by 10pm when there will be 150 tickets available on the door.

Lambeth Open

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Lambeth Open sees artists and makers across the borough open their doors to the public from 10am to 6pm both days this weekend, October 5th and 6th.

Both the spaces on display in Kennington are new to us so we look forward to having a nosey around:

Eszter Szicso is a Hungarian-born painter based at 6 Gaysley House, Hotspur Street in West Kennington, SE11 6TS.

Three different artists are based at 331 Kennington Lane, also in West Kennington.

Elefest

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Elefest is the festival for North and East Kennington and runs from October 4th to 6th. In previous years we’ve enjoyed the The StockMKT, a night market on Friday and Saturday from 5pm-10pm with great food, craft beer, arts and crafts, live music and DJs.

This year you can also go on a tour of the subways under the north roundabout with David Bratby, the artist who painted the murals on their walls, and there’s an art exhibition in the old doctor’s surgery on the soon-to-be-demolished Heygate Estate which has got to be worth a visit for lovers of ruin porn. There’s a screening of The Harder They Come, which features one of the Kennington Runoff’s favourite records, Many Rivers To Cross by Jimmy Cliff, followed by a DJ set from Don Letts.

More Elefest events here.

The Elefest branding is really great this year, and will be even better when the festival is given its rightful name, North Kennifest:

Always Be Comedy at the Tommyfield

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

One of London’s best small comedy nights takes place every second Thursday upstairs at Kennington gastropub The Tommyfield. Sign up to their email list to find out about occasional big name attendees like Russell Howard, Russell Kane and Jason Manford, but even when the big names are absent the line-up tends to be more hit than miss. Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominee Carl Donnelly headlines this Thursday. Don’t sit in the front row unless you want to participate – last time around the actor Marc Warren was there and was roped into more than one routine. Tickets are £6 online or £7 on the door – a bargain for five acts plus some energetic compering.

That Pair at Always Be Comedy at The Tommyfield

Space Station Sixty Five

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Richard & Judy’s Channel 4 TV show was filmed in Kennington for eight years, and part of the former TV studio is now the Space Station Sixty Five art gallery at 373 Kennington Road. SS65 is run by artists and features modern art and sculpture, often with a feminist aspect.

At times, you might feel like you’re in the art gallery equivalent of Reginald Perrin’s Grot, but there is great stuff such as the automata by Paul Spooner. This one is called The Dream although the version in the gallery is slightly different:

I’m not sure who this is by but it’s quite fun:

The current exhibition is Long Time Dead by Debra Swann:

Some items are for sale including these toby jugs by Cathie Pilkington for just £425 each. Better pictures of them can be found here, and they do sell some cheap items as well:

The gallery is open Thursday to Saturday midday to 6pm, or by appointment, and they stay open until 8.30pm on the last Friday of every month, which means tonight.

Two more photos of wonderful things from the Cinema Museum

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Stakeout on Dope Street at the Odeon Elephant & Castle:

In case you can’t read the dialogue:

“You’re peddling the stuff, aren’t you?”

“You got a connection? We can get plenty – all you can handle!”

“You squares stay pure – not me! This is a round-the-world ticket!”

The Cinema Museum

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

The Cinema Museum is participating in Open House London again today, and it’s a magical place, so once you’ve given up queueing for Battersea Power Station, jump on the 344 bus towards Elephant & Castle and head there. They’re open until 5pm with free tours of the building at 2pm and 4pm on a first come basis, and refreshments for sale (they always seem to have made way too many cakes). Be warned though – it’s as hard to find as it is enchanting.

The museum co-founder Ronald Grant was a projectionist who would find out when old Art Deco cinemas were due for demolition, and would hand the demolition men a few quid to let him walk away with anything from the seats to the doors to the signs to the uniforms. Now all these items and many more are permanently housed in a building with its own relevance to cinema history – it began life as a workhouse where the young Charlie Chaplin and his mum ended up more than once. It’s basically Cinema Paradiso in the form of a museum. More history here.

The museum receives no state funding and has none of the sterility one might associate with museums that do. It’s run by volunteers who have a real passion for the cinema – expect to be asked if you’ve seen a little-known silent film from the twenties before having the plot explained to you. Wondering who the most popular English actor of 1915 was? The Cinema Museum have the answer – Stewart Rome.

There are rooms full of archive material stretching back throughout the last century. This is the magazines room:

The museum tour ends with a display of uniforms:

If you don’t make it along today, get along to one of their events. Wonder Reels: Malphino present Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria on October 17th looks good – Latin band Malphino play a Fellini-inspired set and screen his 1957 film about an endearing prostitute with a talent for mambo and hard luck. The museum occasionally plays host to more conventional gigs – Keaton Henson played his hugely acclaimed first ever headline shows there. Look out for talks from legends of cinema – the likes of Terry Gilliam and Ray Harryhausen have appeared in the past. They also sell old film posters for anything from £5 to £500.

Open House Kennington

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Open House London is this weekend and Kennington is well represented.

First up, places that are varying degrees of difficult to visit outside of Open House:

60 Ambergate Street, a “small but well-crafted flat renovation” near Kennington tube

The Mobile Gardeners Park, which we wrote about here

Morley College, the adult education centre in North West Kennington. While you’re there, why not visit London’s largest guerrilla gardening site, located directly in front of Morley College in the giant, lavender-filled flower beds in the middle of Westminster Bridge Road:

Guerrilla tulips in bloom at the Guerrilla Gardening on Westminster Bridge Road, London April 2011, by Richard Reynolds

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain

The Cinema Museum, a true labour of love in the former Master’s House of the Lambeth Workhouse, a Victorian Gothic building where Charlie Chaplin once stayed with his destitute mother. It can be a little tricky to organise tours of the Cinema Museum normally, and there’s a charge, so going during Open House is recommended.

Perronet House, a concrete council block on the north roundabout in North Kennington. If this looks or sounds unpromising then wait till you see the inside – fantastic views across London from two sides, outstanding use of period features, and a sun-drenched terrace full of plants. The photo of Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre below was taken from Perronet House.

Then there are these places which can be visited easily enough outside of Open House:

Beaconsfield, which we wrote about here

Siobhan Davies Studios, which we wrote about here

Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury in England which dates back to the 13th century, is fully booked during Open House, but you can buy tickets for future tours here.

Inside City & Guilds of London Art School

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Kennington Runoff presented itself at the Private View of the MA Fine Art Show tonight, a giddy high point in the Kennington art world calendar. If you’ve never been inside City and Guilds Art School, housed in a row of Georgian buildings along Kennington Park Road, the final shows are an excellent opportunity to poke around this labyrinthine space.

The show, titled Red Thread, runs from 12th-15th September, and is so-called because ‘in East Asian mythology the gods tie a red cord around the ankles of those that are destined to share the same fate – be it death, love or working on the 2103 MA Show at London’s City&Guilds Art School.’

The Kennington Runoff Prize goes to Mark Morgan, for tricking us more than once with his clever excavations. Special mention also goes to Jelena Bulajic and her mammoth-scale portraits. Go and see the show in person, because these photos don’t really do it justice.

Tarek Tuma:

Anja von Kalinowski:

Jelena Bulajic (this is impressively huge in real life):

Mark Morgan:

farewell Elephant & Castle shopping centre?

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

The latest news from the London SE1 website suggests that the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre will now be demolished as part of the regeneration of North Kennington.

This is good news for anyone wanting to see North Kennington successfully regenerated – there’s no denying the shabbiness of the building.

On the other hand, it’s one of London’s most vibrant and culturally diverse shopping centres and it will be missed. We don’t need another Westfield.

Some of our favourite things about it:

– Palace Superbowl – the only bowling alley in London where you can always get a lane, and at a reasonable price as well.

– When The Royal Court opened a theatre in a vacant shopping unit on the first floor.

– Mamuska, the Polish milk bar, which we review here.

– Table tennis:

– And, as well as the various Latin American bars and restaurants in and around the shopping centre, we like the fact that North Kennington now has not one but two Oriental supermarkets. This one is called Little Orient:

Kennington Runoff

Surreptitiously exploring Kennington, including the suburbs Vauxhall, Oval, Walworth, and Elephant since 2012

Category Archives: culture