Last Supper 1981

Step into a warm-lit dining room. A radio hums softly in the background. Plates of familiar dishes are laid out across the table as evening settles over the Royal Docks — the year the docks closed. It is 1981.

Last Supper 1981 invites audiences to gather around a reconstructed family dinner table — the design of the tablecloth inspired by everyday meals from the time — and encounter personal memories of life in the Docklands during a period of rapid industrial and social change. Developed through conversations with local residents who lived and worked in the area during the 1980s, and drawing on archival and community-based research around the Royal Docks, the installation creates a shared listening environment shaped by recorded voices and lived experience.

Combining scenographic reconstruction with spatialised sound, the work offers an intimate space where personal memory meets industrial history — a space shaped by family rituals, everyday resilience and the quiet warmth of home. Around the dinner table, private stories and collective heritage unfold side by side, inviting audiences to reflect on how the textures of daily life are woven into the changing landscape of the Royal Docks.