Alke Schmidt

Alke Schmidt is a mixed media artist whose work combines seductively beautiful form and critical, socially engaged subject matter, thereby disrupting our ideas of decorative and aesthetic pleasure. Past themes have included the occupation of Palestine, the erosion of basic human rights in the "war on terror", and our obsession with fast food. It was only a matter of time before she, as a resident of Walthamstow, would turn to local politics.

STATE OF THE ARTS?

For "No Artist is an Island" I installed, in the Changing Room Gallery, a collaborative "Notice Board" that documented the ongoing campaign to save the museums and cultural assets of Walthamstow. This was a natural progression of my earlier project 'Arcadia".

'Arcadia' was a series of mixed media works that focused on the lack of investment into arts and culture in Walthamstow - through the lens of Walthamstow-born William Morris, with whom I share a love for decorative patterns and a passion for social justice. Starting with photographs of two boarded-up sites in the town centre - the derelict Arcade site and the EMD cinema - I took Morris' political ideas and designs as an inspiration to transform my photographic material. 'Arcadia' was exhibited in Walthamstow's William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum in 2006.

One year on, these two wonderful museums are themselves under threat from cutbacks which involve drastically reduced opening hours and dismissal of key staff. Suddenly my juxtaposition of Morris' heritage with present-day cultural politics had acquired a new urgency.

The aim of the Notice Board project was to capture the spirit of the local campaign to save the museums. I started the Board with images and clippings from my earlier ARCADIA project and from this year’s demonstrations against the cutbacks to Walthamstow’s cultural services. Then I invited gallery visitors to contribute to the Board.

They did not need much persuading: During the opening party and throughout the duration of the show, visitors added poems, drawings, collages, prints, flags, flyers and posters of campaign events, newspaper clippings, and even a T-Shirt. In its final stage the work truly had become that of the local community. The enclosed photos show the evolution of the Board.

Given the enthusiastic response from visitors, I decided to frame this document of local “history in the making” and exhibit it during the 2007 E17 Art Trail. To accommodate the frames, the layout had to be slightly reshuffled, and I added a few more recent documents. No other editing on my part took place.
The campaign to save Walthamstow’s museums and other social and cultural services continues, see
www.keepourmuseumsopen.org.uk

www.alkeschmidt.com