Visits

The Newspaper House is a piece of public art making use of YOUR newspapers in Gillett Square from March 3rd till March 9th.

Come once to bring newspapers that week, come again to see the finished piece on March 8th @ 2pm! Sumer Erek, the artist will unveil.



The project is produced by Creative City. It is a partnership with Hackney Council, Gillett Squared, and supported by UnLtd, Arts Council England, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

www.myspace.com/newspaperhouse
www.creative-city.co.uk
karen[@]creative-city.co.uk for info
press[@]creative-city.co.uk for press

Writing by Suzana Vaz, photo montage by Luiz Antonio Rocfta, for Creative City

All texts and images are copyright of the authors. Please do not use any of the images on this site without express permission. Please contact gillian[@]creative-city.co.uk if you would like to use any of the images.





"'Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon' was one of several appropriate and engaging songs that the radio played during our visit to the Newspaper House, to Sumer Erek and the team of volunteers working at Shacklewell Row. Nico came along, shot carefully around the space with his photo camera and made some fine composite images.

The wooden cast of the house was now painted white, ready to receive the subsequent coloured layers of paint. Inside the house a sector of structural parts and respective filling showed the adopted technological solution, and anticipated the rhythms and texture of the house's flesh. Sumer Erek was working on the windows, exploring different weavings to bring light and air inside.

The several tasks concerning the newspaper sticks occupy different teams of people. Taking the staples out and piling the opened newspapers; rolling different amounts of pages to produce sticks of different thickness; gluing and compressing the paper rolls into sticks in the Stixx's machines; covering coherently the structural wooden parts with sticks of different thickness... The tables with the Stixx's machines were now lined up on a narrow aisle of the Hall, while piles of sticks lay on the available space, side by side with the tall structural parts.

Dealing with the newspapers to prepare them to become sticks is the less specialised task for the volunteer, so I dived on the pile of different free newspapers from Feb 6, Amy Winehouse on the front page of each of them, the majority of the used newspapers opened and folded on the page with the news about her. Loose thoughts about mass media and ethics, drug addiction and creative gifts hovered my mind, and soon enough Jo, Paula, Andrew and I were exchanging points of view on the subject..."

Suzana Vaz, 10 February 2008