At the end of the Victoria line at the Walthomstow station, and then a 15 minute walk through some suburban streets with some lefts and at other times rights is an industrial estate. Through the gate and buried at the very end of the units where you are convinced you are lost and doubting it's existence at all is God's Own Junkyard. It's a worthy pilgrimage and actually sort of where you expect God would put a junkyard.
The warehouse is a monument to neon and the life works of the late Mr Neon, Chris Bracey. It's littered to the rooftop with cables, plug sockets and choice words with neon epigrams, the whole collection is stacked, I suppose how a junkyard of the sort would be. Full of sex, religion, americana, sci-fi and nostalgia that all blend together surprisingly well, It's a visual feast that you can take in with a coffee and an open mouth. It is a gem of a place.
It is really great.
For the last six months, I have been a strange tourist in Munich. I came here to work in a studio and had not so much time to visit it properly. But I partly came in Germany because I was interested in its specific creative approach: it’s precision and rigorousity. In it’s system culture in a way. And indeed it’s a very intellectual society, ruled by color codes and order. It was definitely funny to see that these things are visible in many daily aspects of life.
Or maybe it’s just me wanting to see them... Very soon, I will move to London - where I would like to do some freelance work, in product, furniture and space design.
Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee is an artist, researcher and writer. Her practice is guided by the iterations of slow violence and the dynamic between the ‘near’ and ‘elsewhere’. In attempting to disarm instruments of knowledge production, her practice shies away from reduction and completion. Steering away from essentialisms, she is interested in once-forgotten micro and muted narratives. By revisioning fractured traditions, she engages with visual and textual interventions to navigate the nuances of perception and retention.
Lee also runs XING, a research platform centered on the poetics and politics of Southeast and East Asian art practices. Assuming form of a shapeshifter, it morphs between localities and temporalities; with(in)flux. A domain of not-yet possibilities, the platform attempts to dismantle matrices concerned with the region from non-dominant perspectives.
Milène Larsson is an award-winning, seasoned international news, current affairs and documentary producer/director/reporter covering issues spanning from the environment, gender norms, women’s social status and civil rights, to culture, travel and migration, which she has reported on extensively in the British Media Awards winning documentary series Europe or Die. She’s currently co-Head of Video for VICE and based in London.