The View From My Window Tells Me I’m Home
As part of this year’s Open House, EXHIBIT will show a film by Esther Johnson entitled The View From My Window Tells Me I’m Home. Created in 2010 for The Super Estate Projects, the original piece was part of a 20 months programme to celebrate the Golden Lane Estate’s 50th anniversary. The exhibition of this work provides an excellent opportunity for the public to gain intimate access to one of London’s most iconic housing estates.
Built in the late 1950s by Chamberlin, Bon and Powell, the Golden Lane estate exemplifies an utopian ideal of social housing. A symbol of post-war recovery, the original idea for the complex was to build council housing for residents who serviced and worked in the blitzed City of London. From the outset, the complex was considered to be a model of social cohesion with tenants including doctors, office cleaners, secretaries, caretakers and clergymen. A microcosm of urban amenities on the estate initially included a public swimming pool, Bowling Green (now tennis courts), nursery, pub, shops, police office and estate office – several of these remain. Today the estate is Grade II listed and has approximately 1,500 residents, with a split of council tenants and leaseholders.
The View From My Window Tells Me I’m Home is an observation, investigation and social record of the lives and thoughts of ten current residents, including an architect, a filmmaker/writer, a photographer, a retired homemaker, a butler/chauffeur, a medical student and a nurse, documenting the life of the complex over half a century since its construction. The work asks questions about domestic and private space and of making a home in such an iconic and distinctive architectural environment.
Esther Johnson is an artist and filmmaker whose research practice explores documentary portraiture through moving image, audio and photography. She studied for an MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and was awarded the 2012-15 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Performing & Visual Arts for young scholars.
Johnson’s evocative work examines extraordinary, resonant stories that may otherwise remain hidden or ignored. Recent projects have explored the effect of ‘progress’ and societal change on communities and individuals in the margins of society, and of how the universal can impact on the particular.
21 – 28 Sept 2013
Screening Times
Saturday 21st September: Screenings at 12pm, 2pm, 4pm
Monday 22nd September – Friday 27th September: Screenings from 12pm to 5pm, the film will begin on the hour, every hour.
Saturday 28th September: Screenings from 12pm to 4pm, the film will begin on the hour, every hour.
