Category Archives: culture

War Games at IWM

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We usually like to review the new exhibits at the Imperial War Museum, but had some understandable reluctance to check out their newest show. As it’s about war related video games as we didn’t think it exactly fit, lets just say, the sensitive demographic that we cater to. However, we found it fascinating and it dispelled, among other things, the dated myth that online gaming is a domain for spotty teenage boys. 

War Games: Real Conflicts, Virtual Worlds, Extreme Entertainment is a show displayed in 10 parts, or levels, starting with the psychology of why people  have a long history of gravitating to games involving tactic and strategy. We are then shown a live action game, Wolfenstein 3D (1992) next to Sniper Elite 5 (2022) to see how profoundly gaming has changed over the years. This is where we encounter two enormous screens showing war games and developers telling us in laymen’s terms (it has to be very laymen for us) how they are based on real environments, and they show us how users can play for a few minutes or plan a campaign that takes years to complete. The mind boggles.  

The largest room touches on some of the inevitable ethical complexities involved in developing products based on crushing people’s heads and then running them over. Apparently one of the largest growth areas are games which involve saving people affected by war, which is a relief. And increasingly developers are creating figures which can be succinctly personalised to give gamers a feeling that they have agency with that figure. Video games often reflect the anxieties we face at the time they were created and can be seen as mirrors of the age. For example, imagine a videogame fronted by a resurrected Liz Truss with Covid, running around cutting off everyone’s heating. 

The most enjoyable element of this exhibit can be found on Level 10 (this room is only open until the end of January) which has dozens of retro video consoles from 1980 up until the current day which you can play for free. We saw Sega, Atari, Commodore 24, X Box, Nintendo 64 and others. We won’t tell you which era we played as you’ll then be one step closer to knowing who we are. But suffice it to say that War Games is a sophisticated spread of immersive installations about a culture that many of us know little about. 

For those of you who’ve given IWM a wide berth over the years for moral reasons, we understand your reluctance. However, it is not a temple of jingoistic celebration, and if anything it is dedicated to the human spirit and survival. Galleries dedicated to the Holocaust and women on the home front are very poignant and reminders of the profound impact that conflict has on the innocent.

War Games: Real Conflict, Virtual Worlds, Extreme Entertainment is on now until 28 May and is totally free. 


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Mary Wollstonecraft in Greater Kennington

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Several parts of UK lay claim to the legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft. The  philosopher, writer, visionary, feminist and mother left tracks in Spitalfields, Yorkshire and there is a blue plaque in her honour just outside Greater Kennington. What is less reported is that she spent a number of her formative years living in Walworth, just off the Walworth Road.

By the mid to late 18th century what is now Elephant & Castle and Walworth became fashionable with the middle classes as it was surrounded by market gardens and provided easy access to the City. The result of moving around (and being female) meant that Mary was denied a systematic education, and this was the groundwork for her ultimate life defining work, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. But living in our area made her more curious about the world around her, to the consternation of her father. 

In 1775 Mary was introduced to the Blood family who lived in Newington Butts. Her friend Fanny Blood evolved into an inspiration for Mary and over the next decade inspired her unconventional life. Mary managed to remain close to Fanny for a period until life with her father became too unbearable, and her mother found her lodgings at the home of translator Thomas Taylor in Manor Place, Walworth. 

After an abbreviated life of writing and advocacy Mary died at 38 and left a number of unfinished manuscripts and pieces of work. She also left a 11 year old daughter Mary Shelly, who would go on to write ‘Frankenstein’ when she was just 21. For over a century Mary’s personal life overshadowed her achievements in a manner that would not have happened if she was a man.

A few artefacts of Mary’s era exist in the Cuming Museum (which we wrote about in 2020) at the Walworth Heritage Centre a stone’s throw from her previous abode. Among them is a calling card that Mary left for the Cuming family. If you do happen to find yourself on Walworth Rd imbuing your life with the legacy of Wollstonecraft, we recommend that you take a break by visiting the yummy Shawarma Hut. The history books are unclear as to whether Mary herself actually dined at Shawarma Hut, but we like to think that she would have.

The Currency in Newport St.

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When Time Out, or as we like to call it, ‘that listings site from a bygone era’ described the new show at Newport Street Gallery as ‘stupid, lazy, arrogant, crap art’ we knew we had to get over there as soon as possible.  This very controversial show is called ‘The Currency’ by Damien Hirst and features 10,000 of his dot paintings in several eras of existence. These range from physical paintings to photocopies and then cinder, as the artworks are torched on the first floor. 

For people not aware of Mr. Hirst’s oeuvre, he has spent a large amount of his career preserving dead animals in formaldehyde, sticking diamonds of skulls, and exterminating flies. We reviewed a previous show at Newport in October, 2020.  An abiding theme of Hirst is the repetitive nature of objects and their cycle from inception, to life, to being fetishized and worshiped, and eventual meaningless demise. 

Hirst’s interest in the repetitive nature of dots is well established, and last year he gave 10,000 people the option to buy an NFT .jpg dot painting for £2000. The NFT could then be traded for an original 8×10 work. About half the punters traded it for an original and the remaining suckers  folks stuck with the NFT option. It is these physical works which are on display in monumental floor to ceiling displays and ultimately dispatched into ashen bits above Vauxhall.  

The exhibit is peppered with TV screens featuring live footage of the works being prepped and torched. When the fires aren’t on, there are clips of Mr. Hirst in conversation with actually responsible people such as former Bank of England boss Mark Carney and Stephen Fry, with topics ranging from the absurdity of the art market to the meaningless value of money. Try telling that to the single mum who can’t heat her home at the moment. But we digress. 

Damien Hirst: The Currency is on now until 30 October and is free. Even if you find the theme distasteful, the exhibition itself is quite thought provoking as the paintings/photocopies begin to incrementally disappear. There is also a great gift shop. The fact that over the past 12 months the NFT market has crashed is just a side giggle. However, we at the Runoff would never capitalise of personal loss as that would make us no better than a Florist. 

The Tale of Two Fountains

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Next time you go for your constitutional in Kennington Park, take a moment to inspect two unloved fountains which you’ve probably walked past a thousand times but never taken notice of. Their creation and endurance are interesting reminders of the people and events that have unfolded in our hallowed patch over the years. 

In the southwest corner of the park you can find part of a fountain which was donated by philanthropist Felix Slade in 1861. This is the same Slade who founded the school of art and a number of professorships. Slade lived in Aulton Place, and the story goes that while walking through the park he asked for a glass of water and was handed dirty water in a chipped glass (with Aulton Place only over the road he could have just popped back home but let’s not get stuck on tiny details). When he saw kids playing in the park without access to clean water, Slade to took to the task like a duck to, well, water.  

Slade’s solution for the lack of clean water was laudable but perhaps a bit over the top for a working class Victorian neighbourhood. He funded the erection of an elaborate fountain on a plinth in red Aberdeen granite with brass handles, a large bronze urn, and his own monogram stamped over it, lest people forget who put it there. The handles were nicked shortly thereafter, followed by the urn. When the urn was replaced it was nicked again and then went from being a fountain to a curious oddity and relic of the past.  The ornate base remains and is a reminder of the gulf of understanding and wealth that exists in Greater Kennington to this day.

A bit further up into the park you can see the column which is the remains of Tinworth Fountain. It was created in 1872 in buff terracotta by the Doulton Factory in Vauxhall and was the centrepiece of an ornate sunken garden located where the basketball courts currently reside. It was almost totally destroyed in WWII and put back together without its resplendent and overflowing bowl, which moved and then lost. After being relocated several times it found its current home while still sporting its grand central feature, a sculpture depicting the pilgrimage of life. Sadly the sculpture was knocked over and completely destroyed in 1981. The column that we see today was later used as target practice by local youths. 

Our beaten and bombed column still stands and if you look closely you can see the painstaking efforts made to both restore and destroy it. Some very clever soul even decided to replace some of the unglazed buff terracotta  poured concrete. Nevertheless, Kennington Park has meant many things to many people over the years, and our battered little monuments stand as eternal reminders of that.

Queer Art(ists) Now at Space Station 65

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We recently attended the intriguing exhibit ‘Queer Art(ists) Now’ at Space Station Sixty Five in Kennington Cross. Now if you’re thinking ‘but I’ve never heard of this place’ then you can be forgiven. It’s a very underused artist run space and gallery in the car park (don’t we take you to the most glam places) of Kennington Film Studios. Which we all know as the legendary studio where ‘Richard and Judy’ was once filmed. 

Queer Art(ists) Now brings together 70 artists out of 300 applications and 1000 pieces of art and showcases the best in Queer art at the moment. They have also commissioned five artists to create bespoke works for the exhibit. The works are remarkable for their diversity and cover a range of mediums including oils, photography, film, textiles, papier mache, traffic cones, and discarded items. 

At times, exhibits like this can devolve into preachy diatribes about oppression, or become overtly political and worthy, which leaves people a bit deflated or alienates those who don’t come from that community.  This exhibit is curated in such a manner that it has a certain levity and playfulness about it, and makes you question your assumptions. There are works about the trans experience, body image, gender politics, sex, and the intersection between ‘straight and gay’ and what that means. The variety means you’ll likely come across something pleasing regardless of your tastes or sexuality.  On our visit we were greeted by a young man dancing in a dressing gown and they were giving away free permanent tattoos.

Queer Art(ists) Now is totally free and open Wednesday to Saturday 12 – 8 Until 8 October. They also have a variety of merch on sale to peruse. And why this great exhibition space isn’t used more regularly is one of life’s great mysteries. Like why you never see any baby pigeons or the sudden craze for Greggs branded clothing. 

City & Guilds Free MA Show

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Under the flimsy guise of being actual journalists, we just attended the private view of the huge MA degree show over at City and Guilds in Kennington Park Road. This year does not feature the usual staples of woodcarving and conservation, with a larger emphasis on painting and sculpture. However, it extends over to the old telephone exchange in Kennings Way. 

The themes this year seem to run the gamut to contemplations over solitude, to Japanese anime, to broken pottery.   The MA show is totally free and open this week (Tues-Thu) from 11:00 to 17:00. It’s open until 20:00 on Friday with the tantalising caveat ‘bar from 18:00’.  It closes on Saturday, 10 September at 17:00. 

Beaconsfield Gallery

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We have an intriguing exhibit and sauna (?) to tell you about at the ever avant garde Beaconsfield Gallery in Newport St. The exhibit is ‘Monica Soo – The time is NOW and it is overdue!’. Soo was a feminist Swedish painter who explored subjects which are now researched and discussed but were at the time still mostly not part of the common vernacular. Namely, anguish about the environment, systemic violence against women, and non binary ways of living. This is told through the vehicle of the celebration of the Goddess culture. This isn’t the most uplifting giggle of an exhibit, but it is thought provoking and in a way is even immersive, as the paintings and drawings snake up the wall. 

Sticking with all things Scandi, also being exhibited is ‘The Finnish Sauna’, created by architect Sami Rintala in collaboration with architecture students from the University of Westminster. We had a chin wag with gallery staff about just how in the world a mobile sauna ended up in their car park, and they explained that it has been transferred from the London Festival of Architecture, who they have collaborated with for years. Inside you’ll find all of the usual accoutrement associated with a sauna, such as coals and a giant ladle to pour water over your head. Also in the car park is a watchtower associated with the Soo exhibit. We’re not sure what it was for, but it afforded sweeping views towards Pimlico Plumbers. 

Monica Soo – The time is NOW is open until 10 September and the Sauna until October, and private bookings for the sauna can be found here. When a show is on (which isn’t very often) Beaconsfield Gallery is open Wednesday – Saturday from 12-5 and is totally free. However, getting inside the sauna costs £20 and Runoff bosses refused to sign off on it. Perhaps we approached the topic wrong when we said ‘please give us 20 quid to visit a sauna in Vauxhall’. We’ll try to be more subtle in future. 

Erno in the Elephant

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It may come a surprise that a post war high rise complex in Elephant and Castle is Grade II listed, but it is and we’re here to tell you how it happened. You’ve probably walked by Metro Central Heights a million times and never taken notice of it. It is fact the creation of Brutalist architect Erno Goldfinger, who was also the brains behind probably the most iconic high rises in Britain; Trellick Tower in N. Kensington and Balfron Tower in Poplar (pictured at bottom). In spite of this, he always considered his achievement in Elephant to be his most significant work. 

The building complex was christened Alexander Fleming House and when it opened in 1963 housed the Department of Health and Social Security. While many found the building soulless, the blocks were praised for their ‘clarity and vigour’ and for the added addition of public courtyards (not public anymore, but we’ll get to that) and green spaces between the juxtaposed buildings. It was also seen as an inspiration for the then mostly bombed out Elephant. Alexander Fleming House served the DoH dutifully for 30 years until it developed a nasty case of sick building syndrome and the civil servants were forced to flee to alternative premises. 

Luckily for our sick and unloved building, Goldfinger designed it speculatively and intended it for a variety of then unknown reasons. It lay empty for almost 20 years and was almost bulldozed (an attached Goldfinger cinema faced a sorry downfall in 1988) until it it was converted into 400 flats and rechristened Metro Central Heights in 2002. It was geared towards young professionals (that’s code for hideously overpriced) and the open public areas made not so public. Next time you walk by the complex you might want to reevaluate your opinion by looking at the angles, jutting windows, and over the railings into the courtyards 

Goldfinger was a notoriously fickle and humourless character, sometimes firing his employees on a whim and upsetting his snooty Hampstead neighbours by mowing down a row of Victorian cottages to erect his Modernist home (now a museum) at 2 Willow Road. One of these neighbours was none other than 007 author Ian Fleming. Unable to prevent Goldfinger’s builders from mowing down the cottages by traditional methods, Fleming exacted revenge in the only other way he knew how…..By naming his most famous Bond villain after the architect. 

The building still continues to totally divide opinion but, like it or not, was granted Grade II listing status in 2013. If you have a spare half million to toss around you can even be part of the experience. Apparently it has a pool. 

  • Trellick Tower
  • Balfron Tower

Deadname @ Gasworks Gallery

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If you visit us regularly here on the Runoff you’re aware that when a new show arrives at Gasworks Gallery in Vauxhall we like to check it out for you. If you’ve never been to Gasworks it’s located at the Oval end of Vauxhall St. and is perfect if what you demand from a gallery involves Styrofoam coffins or dolls that talk to you. 

The new exhibition at Gasworks is called ‘Earth is a Deadname’ by Rotterdam based artist Lou Lou Sainsbury. This show was commissioned by Gasworks and is an exploration of transgender life outside the limiting language of medicalisation. The exhibition revolves around a performance film which touches on aspects of intimacy, feelings of difference, chance encounters, and evolution. A giant cymbal also features on screen and over your head but were going to leave that interpretation up to you. There is also a bedroom cabinet in the room with a range of items telling us that the trans experience is a collective one of unmaking and making the body. 

The larger gallery is dominated by a large scale glass installation with fluctuating levels of transparency, again alluding to the trans journey. As the journey is rarely straightforward, imbedded in the glass are trapped cigarette butts, dried flowers and other debris. The exhibition is punctuated by flesh like texts on the walls which swell like scars or stigmata. All very thought provoking for a little gallery in Vauxhall, and time well spent. 

Earth is a Deadname is on now until 18 September and is totally free. Gasworks is only open in the second half of the week so have a look at their website. The amber resin on the floor is part of the exhibit, so in your leaving comments please don’t write ‘Sainsbury, clean up in aisle one’!!!!!  (we couldn’t help ourselves). 

The Treehouse and a Handy Website for Us All

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Over the past few months we’ve watched with curious excitement as a stylish but seemingly unnecessary structure has emerged in the middle of the Millennial playground that is Elephant Park. It’s called ‘The Treehouse’ and we’ve just checked it out. Let us tell you reader, we’re now more perplexed than ever. 

The Treehouse is constructed from sustainable timber and looks quite striking with its Constructivist sharp angles and stylish benches. When we climbed to the top we found ourselves, well, only slightly higher than people’s heads. It has some nice plantings and places to sit up top, but what we were hoping for was more along the lines of a giant slide or at least a small outpost of ‘Greggs’. 

The Treehouse is open now and is a quiet and shady spot during these hot days, and once mounted it rewards you with sweeping views of people eating their lunch in Sayer Street. If you want to go to the official opening party it’s on 22 July from 12 to 8 and features, err, yoga!  We can’t see any mention of free cakes or cocktails on their website but we might just pitch up anyway. 

Moving on, our slightly eccentric colleagues over at the Kennington Association have created a very handy website for new arrivals into Greater Kennington, which is also great for people seeking a bit of inspiration about things to do.  The very nice group of volunteers at KA run Lollard Street playground and do many other great things for our community such as a Secret Santa. So if you have any feedback for their growing website please be nice, as we know what you lot are like.