Passport to Pimlico: May Day Art Day in Churchill Gardens Estate

Passport to Pimlico was a one-day art event that took place on 5 May 2014. I was in my first month of my practice-based PhD at Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon (CCW) Colleges of Arts when I applied for CCW Student Initative funding for the project. The ‘initiative’ was a gift. I make sculptures and installations using found objects and appropriated spaces. In a similar way I was very lucky to find and appropriate the unique funding, location, and collaborators for this event.

The title Passport to Pimlico came from the 1949 Ealing comedy of the same name, in which residents of Pimlico find an ancient document which allows them to declare themselves independent from the rest of Great Britain, its laws and governance. My kernel of an idea since watching the film in 2010 had essentially been to have a party for the artistic community in a space where we were not usually allowed to have a party, and to lift the rules on the use of the space.
The idea then developed as I embarked on my PhD research and became interested in agonism - a political theory that focuses on the value of conflict rather than harmony within democracy. In my sculpture I have been using agonism as a metaphor: imagining the dissensus between one appropriated object and another as they are forced together to become a precarious whole. When appropriating space – as in the context of Passport to Pimlico – the agonism becomes more real: inserting the work of over 60 artists into a community space, disrupting the usual use of the space to create a productive agonistic dialogue through art.

Following the themes of the film, the intention of the Passport to Pimlico event was to offer participants, residents and visitors an ideal of freedom through the creation of an independent art state within the community. It also presented an opportunity for us as art practitioners and researchers to consider what rules and regulations we should seek to resist, within the context of art practice,
research and education.

Held on the May Day Bank Holiday, I invited content that referenced both traditional (spring/pagan) and political May Day themes to reflect that. I saw within these twin threads further layers of meaning about community rebellion and the celebration of the eruption of spring following the sterility and containment of winter.

I deliberately described myself as the event ‘creator’ rather than ‘curator’ as I wanted the work to happen as freely as possible on the day. I said yes to almost all of the submissions I received and gave the artists an approximate area to set up, but was happy for them to move around too and for parts of the work to be unknown to me until the day itself. It grew organically through the artists understanding the idea, generously getting involved, and bringing others in too - whether current students, alumni, tutors, or invited external artists.

This generosity expanded to the location too: Team Churchill in Churchill Gardens Estate allowed us to take over for free a public square and community hall within the largest housing estate in Pimlico; the adults and children visiting the event saw, heard, tasted and experienced everything for free; the activity of art allowed the local participants a freedom beyond the usual remit of the Hall and Square, and the Hall and Square allowed the artists a freedom beyond the usual remit of their practice.

Lana Locke, July 2014