Posts by Sarah Birch
Jarman’s film diary returns to print in Hackney
Written as he filmed with Tilda Swinton, the notes move between an HIV diagnosis and Thatcher’s Britain
Read MoreBig Bang, small mercies
Mad Spirit Productions’ Serious Money at the Courtyard Theatre has great lines, a cracking tempo and accents that wander across the Atlantic
Read MorePlaying with fire
A new book by a local forest school teacher argues that our relationship with flames is what makes us human
Read MoreBomb sites, go-karts and gas fires
Henry Say’s memoir of a 1950s Shadwell childhood captures a docker’s street in loving detail — just as containerisation was about to sweep it away
Read MoreBrush up your business: the consultant who says we’re all artists
Eugene Hughes’s upbeat case for imagination at work
Read More‘It’s not a play’: the Andover Estate in its own words
Verbatim theatre, grassroots storytelling or something with no name yet?
Read MoreSex and the little city: The World is Full of Married Men – review
Erik Holmström stages a novel once banned across three continents on a dozen dollhouse sets, filmed live and subtitled. Filthy, funny and oddly tender
Read MoreFamous faces, gloriously refigured
At New Art Projects, Jo Chate and Janet Sainsbury take pictures we think we know — Modigliani, Munch, a Leonardo, a Piero — and paint them anew
Read MoreGardens that Can Save the World review – a green thumb for the age of heatwaves
With 35-degree May temperatures fresh in the memory, Lottie Delamain’s new book offers an imaginative, ecological tour of gardening— from aeroponics to office cultivations, by way of John Little, the former Hackney Council gardener now training residents to grow on brownfield sites
Read MoreIn plain sight
An exhibition in Bow gathers photographs, audio and writing by mothers of disabled children
Read MoreThe stagehand’s tale
Eden Phillips’ memoire Backstage Confidential explores the texture of a world
Read MoreLong Grass in the Wind: Tales from Language Land – review
A unique anthology of essays in Arabic and English
Read MoreLiquid Trust at Chisenhale Gallery
Rachael Crowther’s uses pink walls and chemical scents to examine the history of state surveillance and psychological control
Read More‘Never Again’: A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League
Geoff Brown captures the heroic, bottom-up effort to scupper the far-right’s electoral breakthrough and dismantle the National Front’s influence on British street culture.
Read MoreRequiem for a night out – Fiona Connor at Maureen Paley
What happens to a place once the locks are changed for the last time? Sculptor Fiona Connor explores the ‘different sort of heat’ found in recreations of our most familiar, yet fleeting, urban artifacts
Read MoreArtist Ami Clarke finds beauty in bacteria at Hackney Downs installation
Cyanobacteria is equal parts stunning and lethal, and for several summers has bloomed in he UK’s largest lake, Lough Neagh
Read MoreNina Dellow explores’ ‘what is precious’ at first solo exhibition
‘Bona Vacantia’ is on at Praxis N16 until March 31
Read MoreBaroque / Rococo at New Art Projects – recalling art history in a new way
Artist Charles Williams brought together artists he admires to create works inspired by 17th and 18th century artists
Read More‘Underground (and Surface)’ – Jock McFadyen teams up with Pogues member in new exhibition
Ahead of his new exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery, McFadyen tells East End Review how he finds unlikely inspiration on the London Underground
Read MoreHackney author David Annand tackles social injustice in ‘The Dice Was Loaded from the Start’
Annand’s zippy new novel sees 42-year-old Max Anderson wrestle between two realities in an idyllic North London setting
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