Crossing Lines December 2022 Meeting

As usual there were two presenters: Austin Guest and Claire Reddleman.

Austin began with a study of changes in the outskirts of St Albans beginning with archive images of the hospitals which had stood there. One, a mental hospital, had had its own orchard, farm fields, cricket ground and railway link to bring coal; it made its own gas too. One hospital had been taken over by Barts as a war-time casualty outpost. Demolitions began in the 1990s with some parts retained and converted to apartments.

Austin’s own images, originally produced for local exhibition, traced the new developments and survivals on the hospital sites. The housing is mostly ‘executive’ with little social. Former parkland is now devoted to football pitches and there is a new maze, a public garden and allotments.

Claire introduced us to a project she has been working on since 2012, beginning in response to the London Olympics though that impetus has diminished over time.

Beginning in a study of the way to the Olympic site from central London and taking in images from northern uplands, splicing them, producing composites “Aldgatedale to Kirk Stratford”, all is collaged, texts (from very varied sources) as much as images. The very real is recombined as the unreal. We await the book; it is due this year.

The next meeting of Crossing Lines will be on 1 February on Zoom. Details will be available shortly before – probably Peter Luck with more gas holders(surviving and not) and Anthony Palmer in Malaysia.