Eleven Spitalfields Gallery
8 March-26 April 2013
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An intimate portrait of London’s most talked about post code is revealed in 125 new drawings by Adam Dant titled ‘Soerditch: Diary of a Neighbourhood’.
Dant has created a drawing a day, each of which encapsulates a particular aspect of the life and stories that surround his Shoreditch studio. Taking their form and attitude from the traditional editorial cartoons of Giles et al, each of Dant’s drawings combines a familiar location with a random scrap of overheard gossip, profanity, inanity, information or opinion to present a compendium of views that forge a vivid picture of contemporary life.
Choosing to use the areas original soubriquet ‘Soerditch’ after the local ‘sour ditch’ that issued into the Thames, the subjects of these pictures are intended to echo the centuries-old history of Shoreditch as an extra-mural site of all manner of theatrical and bawdy events and to serve as an echo of the prattle and twitterings of those former ages. In this historical sense they might also be reminiscent of the scenes of daily life encountered in Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’ .
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Caption reads: ‘There’s a naked man asleep in here!’ … ‘Ooh! Do you think it’s “a piece”?’
A 128-page paperback volume ‘Soeditch: Diary of a neighbourhood’ has been produced in the fashion of a traditional newspaper cartoon annual and will be available at the exhibition.
See more work by Adam Dant
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