London Open House aboard SS Robin with inaugural pontoon exhibition

14-15 & 21-22 September 2024 ~ Saturday & Sunday 11am-5pm

SS Robin
Pontoon
Trinity Buoy Wharf
64 Orchard Place E14 0JW

You are cordially invited to experience the inaugural exhibition aboard the pontoon that supports SS Robin at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where the river Lea meets the Thames.

Part of the three-year SE.E NE.W Histories programme made possible by Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with support from SS Robin Trust and Soho Printstore.

SE.E NE.W Histories takes its name from four compass points emanating out of Trinity Buoy Wharf in Poplar, where the river Lea meets the Thames in east London, the epicentre of this three and half year project  investigating the pre/early history of photography 1790-1920, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust:

SE denotes the London borough of Bromley where Anna Atkins experimented with cyanotypes in the grounds of Halstead Place;

E is the London borough of Newham, site of the vast Getty Archive that houses 80 million analogue images, of which only 5% have so far been digitised;

NE is Newcastle in northeast England where Joseph Swan introduced tonality into photographic printing with his bromide process;

W is the West Midlands, where pioneering image-making equipment was designed and manufactured, including cameras, lenses and the very first photocopier.

After immersive research at the Bodleian Oxford, including three plant-based imaging workshops, we are working with specialists in the field of ‘natural magic’ to create emulsions and developers from tree bark, leaves and vegetables, to highlight the pioneering work of chemist Elizabeth Fulhame in the 1790s, and other largely forgotten female pioneers of ‘photo-graphic’ image-making such as Anna Atkins, Mary Rosse and Mary Somerville. Until 1826 women could not publish their findings with The Royal Society as they were not ‘gentleman scientists’ so they did this through advocates such as John Herschel, who himself discovered that sodium thiosulfate ‘fixed’ images and is credited with coining the word ‘photo-graphy’

As well as creating images using recently rediscovered plant-based processes in free-to-attend public workshops, the other key strands of SE.E NE.W Histories are:

• To recreate key scientific discoveries of the period relating to each photographic process that we investigate throughout the period 1790-1920, using these processes to document the design, build and use of scientific equipment
• To learn from the exemplary practice at our core location of Trinity Buoy Wharf, where heritage buildings have been preserved to be used as creative spaces.
• To output the resulting images in publications, using printing processes of the day
• To acquire historical cameras and projectors, to refurbish for use in the project

The ultimate aims in engaging members of the public in SE.E NE.W Histories are:

• To highlight environmentally friendly imaging processes first used 230 years ago
• To foster and grow interest in the lost histories of female photographic pioneers
• To offer opportunities for people who have not previously experienced heritage, to learn and appreciate the importance of British innovation in science 1790-1920

Already this project has come to the attention of the Cultural Impact Research Centre Europe, an international academic study that has a lab at London City University:

• We gave CIRCE researchers a tour of our operations in Poplar
• Invited them to the Getty Archive tour and conservation demo
• Took part in their Weaving the Threads of Diversity seminar at City University
• Attended the CIRCE symposium in Berlin, where our work was discussed
• Viewed the extensive photographic collection at the German Technical Museum

As a result of our input to CIRCE research, we are now part of the How Might We Sessions where we can further advocate the support process of NLHF to organisations such as ours, and how the lived experience that we offer as a counterpoint to academic practice, is just as valued in the methodology of cultural impact, arguably in fact more demonstrably impactful to members of the public who have had little if any previous engagement with heritage.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e40-creating-an-art-space-disguised-as-a-pub/id1688941795?i=1000646219478