ARTFILE

Approaching the site from the west, one enters the narrow defile of Redchurch Street, that links Shoreditch High Street with Bethnal Green Road. To the north is the historically significant Arnold Circus rubble mound and Victorian bandstand, which are backed on to by "When will I be rich" St.Leonard’s Church Shoreditch, designed by George Dance the elder, and the start of the modern A10, formerly known as the Great North Road ('a figuration of the forcefield of the modern' according to Frederick Jameson), or in Roman times, Ermine Street.

The White Horse, with a 1st floor 'table-dancing venue' called Blush located on the corner of Redchurch Street, is a pub reputed to have been frequented by William Shakespeare, who lodged in nearby Holywell Lane during the 1590s. Opposite is CBG Marcus Heard, insurance broker & underwriting agents, and these two premises, akin to the dogs of Alcibiades, guard the entrance to the thoroughfare.

Known colloquially in the nineteenth century as the "Old Nichol", the area was a notorious rookery where a copper could be beaten up, or worse, if he took a wrong turn. Alluded to in Friedrich Engels' seminal The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1844), the Illustrated London News (24 Oct 1863) described how its 'homeworkers' eked out a living 'huddled in dark cellars, ruined garrets, bare and blackened rooms reeking with disease'. Eventually the slum was cleared and replaced in 1900 by the Boundary Estate, the original council housing estate. For an in-depth contemporary account of this once minatory neighbourhood see Sarah Wise's The Blackest Street: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum (2008).

On your immediate left today is Caravan a voguish curio shop, and Aesop, with its pseudophilosophically endorsed beauty treatments, both catering to the whims of the fashion-conscious, professional young, while the same might be said for the organic wholefood store Albion, with its wooden crate of squashes, carrots and purple-sprouting out on the pavement. Connoisseurs of hot chocolate should try a mug in the cafe. The Tea Building forms the southern boundary of Rechurch Street. A massive, former Lipton tea warehouse, its five refurbed storeys with Crittall type external windows, have been turned into serviced office spaces for new media companies, with bars and eateries such as Pizza East, and the Rocket and Hales galleries. Without doubt the Conranisation of this quartier is now relentless, and what was formerly a nondescript street has become a bijoux mecca for the Hoxditch crowd.

The Redchurch Pylon itself is a jerry-built wooden structure that has gone up on the ground floor of a LEGO block of workshops, offices and project rooms, collectively known as No More Grey, which is awaiting demolition. The host book shop Kaleid has provided a demotic space for this structure, designed by the bricoleur Pete Williams, and apparently intended to quote the infamous Dada tower made by Johannes Baader at the 1920 Berlin Dada Fair. Incorporating small nooks & crannies, vertiginous shelves and even a bird box The Redchurch Pylon reaches all the way to the shop ceiling, conveying a strong sense both of independence and yet need too, its aspirational thrust tempered by the arte povera quality of the raw materials. Perhaps the latter is the reason for its success in an era that has seen the collapse of tower projects such as the "Penny Whistle" in Ealing, and the "Cheese Grater" in Leadenhall Street. As Rowan Moore commented in the Evening Standard (13 Dec 2009) 'skyscrapers are expensive, slow to build, difficult to finance and hard to let; they are all or nothing projects'.

The purpose of this tower gravitates beyond the merely self-referential though, as it bravely furnishes space for a whole host of non-editioned artists' books which extend beyond its apron out into the L-shaped project room of Kaleid, thereby creating a kind of fair. Over fifty book art practitioners showcased work in a mind-boggling array of materials and forms: index cards, tracing paper, beach pebbles, Japanese binding, photocopy, foam mould, lino-cut, copper etching, screenprint, used books, newspaper, teabags, digital printing, plaster cast, decoupage, comic book, screen print, lightbox, zine, glass valve and modified oil painting. The list could go on and on, the participants and their multifarious work all caught up in an unwitting, frenzied collaboration.

Online reviews:
http://www.hoxtonlive.com/tags/trolley-gallery/ http://www.panmacmillan.com/Picador/ManageBlog.aspx?BlogID=0f8109a6-1e6d-4828-a096-901300a5c36eabinet-ize.fr/

'The Grand Plasto-Baader Books', Kaleid, 23-25 Redchurch St., London E2 7DJ; 2-24 Dec 2009.

http://www.kaleideditions.com/