Please see the Estuary Festival page for BSL and more information.
In her documented walk, Here/Her: A Walk Along the Edge of the City, commissioned by Metal Culture UK for the Estuary Festival 2021, Rebecca Moss shares a route that she has frequently returned to during lockdown, between Rainham, on the edge of East London, and Grays in West Essex. Fascinated by this in-between space, where the city begins to break down, she reflects on what it means to be an artist based on the edge of the city, and why this industrial and derelict landscape has been inspiring for her practice.
The route begins by exploring an abandoned wharf on the edge of Rainham, passing under the QE2 bridge, finishing at the Procter & Gamble soap factory in Grays. Along the way, Moss encounters the ‘wall of fame’ – a huge open air art exhibition consisting of Thames flood defence panels painted in graffiti and World War II concrete ‘pillbox’ defences.
For the last 10 years, Moss has been returning to places where she grew up in the Essex landscape to make an ongoing series of video performances. For this collaboration with Metal for the Estuary 2021, she shares insights about why certain locations are particularly inspiring for these videos and why she believes post-industrial, wild locations should be considered as feminist spaces.
