Alive, alive-o
Deptford can sound a little ominous. Perhaps it’s the word that sounds like just the place to find a pawnshop or loan shark, but then it could be the place’s reputation never recovered after Christopher Marlowe’s murder. That was 500 years ago, but I’d never visited before this weekend.
Autumn and I made a trip down to Deptford High Street last Saturday to stock up the fridge and we found a different world. A huge anchor guards the south end of the street, and nearby a choir of about ten people were praising the lord. “Jesus is alive” the leader sang, “Jesus is alive” responded his choir before launching into a song. Further down the crowded street, market stalls sell Christian literature and music. At the railway bridge a crowd of West African men and women dressed in brightly coloured robes had just left church. The women have huge, starched turbans called gele and men wear smaller round hats with the one corner of the top folded over, a fila.
You Tell Me Again I’m Not Interested
Near the north end of the street a small shop front was filled with marketing signs and stickers – all without any writing. A luminous, but empty oval waited for a special offer, a copy-free credit card symbol avoided the crunch. “Must be Goldsmith’s students” Autumn mused. Another shop, painted white, had been turned into an ‘artists space’. Inside a short film called Studs, apparently a tribute to Jackie Collins’ 1969 novel The Stud, played synchronised swimming and muffled monologues on a nine-minute loop. The film’s minder explained this was all part of Deptford X, an art festival that has been running in the area for 10 years.
Turning back we went for a coffee in The Deptford Project, an old railway carriage that’s also been painted white now operating as a cafe. At the back they have an Elvis-themed loo in a garden shed, from where I could see a flea market in the yard next door and a man working with a sewing machine in the one behind the train.
The man using the sewing machine was making black arm bands to commemorate ‘the death of art’. His name was Ruben, and he wore a battered fedora and drove a battered 1972 Citroën, parked at the other side of the yard. He offered to turn us into art which involved putting on his tubular suit that makes you look like an Anthony Gormley sculpture, then he makes a pastel sketch. Of course, all the pictures look identical.
Suddenly, I’m art
The rest of the yard was filled with more artwork. A spoof police incident sign warning of ‘A Moment of Random Happiness’, a Tomb for the Unknown Shopper and some sheds. Each one was made by a different artist, there was a yellow shed that rocked, a shed with wallpaper and chandeliers, and a shed with a long periscope that allows you to see areas of Deptford that you probably had no idea existed.
Tags: Deptford market, Deptford Project, Deptford X, fila, gele