Amalia Pica with Octavia residents with collaborator Molly Moon

In preparation for Gerry’s inaugural Gongoozling (a canal procession) we collaborated with some incredible local community groups to develop artworks that would be performed during the parade.

Artist Amalia Pica worked in collaboration with elderly residents from Octavia to dye handerchiefs with natural plant dyes with wild-plant teacher and maker Molly Moon. In the second workshop Amalia led the residents in devising slogans and printing onto their handerchiefs some of which were then used in Gerry’s Gongoozling to enable people to participate by waving their handkerchief when they encountered performers waving on bridges as we processed along the tow paths.

Artists Sharmain Gordon-Forde and Kyra Zhang have been introducing young people from The Avenues Youth Group to the history of early reggae and sound system culture. They collaborated with local musician and community worker Niles Thompson Hailstones, who helped the children to explore making sounds together. They sang and recorded some Bob Marley songs with Niles posing questions to the children like,"what is music?" They talked about how sound and sound waves affect us and can even change the shape of things 'if someone shouted in this room what would it do to the space?'… Inspired by a trip to legendary local record shop People’s Sound and historic reggae covers as well as other interactive exercises, the young people developed and created their own vinyl artwork to accompany the track they recorded and which was then displayed and played at our Shebeen at the finale of our Gerry’s Gongoozling.

DEVISING A TACTILE GLOSSARY USING TOUCH & MAKING WEARABLE ARCHITECTURE

RATHER WEAR A CASTLE THAN A FROCK?

On 22nd February, supported by Maida Hill Market’s ‘Artist Takeover’, artist Sol Golden-Sato and Gerry’s Pompeii transformed old cardboard boxes into palaces and flats inspired by Gerry’s iconic buildings with members of the local community. Highlights included security worker Lorraine becoming the first ‘block of flats’ to dance the Samba (that I’ve seen) and one of our youngest participants ran wild whilst wearing a monastery on his head, which we decided might have signified the ‘dissolution of the monasteries’. Since Gerry wasn’t a fan of Henry VIII we feel he would have also laughed…

A MULTI-SENSORY JELLY-BASED DESCRIPTION WITH SIENNA MURDOCH

On Monday 24th February, in collaboration with CIC ‘Your Canal Boat’ we held a sensory workshop with artist Sienna Murdoch. Building on our tactile game ‘What’s in the Box’ which Sienna had developed for our alternative Summer Fete in collaboration with local charity PiP, we furthered our experiments with touch to try and expand our abilities to communicate.  We each felt inside our own covered bucket and described the objects we could feel to the rest of the group (without peeping), alluding to what imaginative worlds these things might inhabit as well as our personal associations as we devised a tactile glossary for our perceptions. Then the objects were unveiled to much delight. It was visceral and surreal and exciting. We all went to Gerry’s Pompeii afterwards and tried out some of our newly attuned touches to some of the textures at Gerry’s.

Click on the here or the video above to hear some touching soundbites made by Sienna….”It’s like an alien’s wallet, it’s made with gunk and full of coins…”