Some of the best conversations are about things you never knew once happened around you.
Like the woman called Mother Redcap who stalked the streets of Camden Town around 1700, intimidating passersby and harassed by the community in equal measures. And the canal carrying its old and new dirty secrets, flowing the same course through Kentish Town and Regent’s Park. Or the ugly white bollard towering in front of a house on the corner, which a friend points out has a beheaded twin on the other side of Tufnell Park Road, marking the driveway to the Burghley estate.
Our forthcoming project Of Local Interest is an exhibition by a group of artists and curators exploring the connections between Camden’s past and present. Through different media, little known characters and events will be uncovered, digging up objects which appeared lost to create modern interpretations of local history.
The group is playing to a strong urge that exists in most of us. We like to know what happened here before so we can judge what has changed. We look out for similarities, notice the familiar, those patterns that help us feel at home. Add some gossip and secrets – and we get very interested in the past. It gives us permission to marvel at the sameness of everything, how people weren’t so different after all. Just like us, they regularly betrayed each other, avoided the law, sometimes helped a neighbour.
UNTITLED London’s work demonstrates how the strangeness of Camden has always been there. Camden High Street and its surroundings have played host for hundreds of years to crazy scenes, live art and music, food from across the world. The public is invited to enter into its local history, replay it through their 21st century experience, decide for themselves how curious it is that Charlie Chaplin performed around the corner; or that a herd of elephants escaped a travelling circus and rampaged the streets of Kentish Town. Whether the consequences of Egyptomania in the work place or the echoes and traces of Camden’s past, present & future, I defy anyone not to be interested.
And you might even come away with a story that you can pass on to friends.
