A13 was an exhibition exploring the banal and the extraordinary on the A13, as seen through the eyes of Iain Sinclair, Jock McFadyen, Helena Ben-Zenou, Sean Rogg, Chris Petit and Antony Gormley.
The A13 runs from the Aldgate Pump in the City of London to Southend-on-Sea, by way of Limehouse, Dagenham and suburban Essex. At first sight the most dismal of thoroughfares, it exerts a powerful pull on the contemporary creative imagination. It is the archetype of road space, the in between territory of habitation and movement that can be found in every modern city, from Tokyo to Lagos to Los Angeles. At the same time, it is unique. It brings together an ancient history of Romans, Saxons and Normans, with a contemporary landscape of displaced gangland, massive industrial interventions, and what Sinclair calls “aspirant Americana”.
The exhibition presented the A13 as the singular archetype of a universal condition, of something so familiar that we no longer notice it, yet secretly extraordinary.
Participants included:
Iain Sinclair, writer
Jock McFayden, artist
Anthony Gormley, artist
Helena Ben-Zenou, artist
Tom de Paor, architect
Chris Petit, filmmaker
Susie Honeyman & Giles Perring, musicians
And work by:
Peter and Alison Smithson, architects
Erno Goldfinger, architect
Nicholas Hawksmoor, architect
In partnership with The Architecture Foundation.