Between Walking and Making - Making Space Walks

Join us for Between Making and Walking, a walk around the Royal Docks that will incorporate hands-on art activities. This is the last in our series of free walks curated in response to Making Space, a multi-site commission by London-based artist Jessie Brennan for the Royal Docks in Newham, East London.

This walk, led by collaborative artists Abigail Hunt and Kieren Reed and aimed specifically at young people aged 16 to 24, will explore site specific responses to the built environment. It will lead participants through the area inviting them to engage in a range of creative activities including drawing, large scale collaborative mark making and casting.

Participants will be invited to consider the architecture around the Royal Docks and to respond to the formal structures of the city by exploring the in between spaces situated around Jessie Brennan’s artworks. During the walk participants will also be encouraged to look for the temporary structures, shadows, signs and symbols within the built environment that often go unnoticed, exploring the understanding around what they might mean and interpreting new narratives around them. Hunt and Reed will be making stops along the route inviting the group to take part in shared making experiences, to learn new skills and processes and to respond to related moments in the city.

This walk will begin at Pontoon Dock DLR Station.

If you are younger than 16 and would like to attend, you are welcome to join us! We do however require that you are accompanied by an adult aged 18 or over.

All walks will later be made available as self-guided walks through a series of downloadable podcasts and printable maps as a lasting legacy of the project. All Making Space walks will take place in person in the Royal Docks, Newham. COVID-19 social distancing and guidance will apply.

Making Space and the associated walks programme has been curated by UP Projects and commissioned by the Royal Docks Team.

About Abigail Hunt and Kieren Reed

Artists Abigail Hunt and Kieren Reed have a collaborative practice, making work that involves a direct interaction with audience, through creating both suggested situations and functional sculpture. Exploring the conceptual space between form and function they create large-scale structures and installations that are ‘activated’ through a relationship with audience.

Interested in the physical and discursive dimensions of sculpture these works hold the potential to become a site for exchange, exploration and the initiation of discussion. Together they have worked on commissions for Tate Britain, IKON Gallery, Herbert Read Gallery and The New Art Gallery Walsall. They have shown work both internationally and in the UK, including exhibitions at Tate Modern, Studio Voltaire and Gasworks as well as works for Cubitt and the Whitstable Biennale.

Abigail Hunt has over twenty years freelance experience teaching, facilitating and managing creative projects for galleries, museums and other organisations.

Kieren Reed is a Professor of Fine Art at UCL and is the Director of the Slade School of Fine Art.