So familiar...
A summer project by Joanna Brinton working with staff, parents and carers, and two year-olds from the Chesterton Children’s Centre. This publication charts a series of activities and events held in the grounds of the Children’s Centre and in Battersea Park, by Pump House Gallery, that explored the green spaces that connect the two sites and the area’s past as a lavender farm. The activities were designed in response to the historical context of the park and observation of the children at the centre, their interests and pursuit of play. The following list of their actions informed the development of this project enormously.
Arranging Process Posting Unpacking Transporting Enclosing Covering Uncovering Transferring Stacking Spreading Spooning Scooping Pouring Experiments Rolling Transferring Jumping Shaking Licking Sprinkling Digging Watering Intentions for the project: An invitation A story A journey To grow, smell, taste
Scent as memory: a lavender pillow Find an old piece of fabric, something soft. Cut into a length approx. 1m x 25cm. Fold in half, inside out, lengthways. Sew two edges leaving a gap at the top. Turn right side out to form a sack. Roll lavender sprigs in acrylic paint, feel the wet, sticky leaves. Press onto fabric to create flower prints. Peg up to dry.
Mix oats and dried lavender together. Stir them with your hands. Smell the lavender releasing its oil. Fill the bag 3/4 full. Sew up the final side. Pop in a microwave for 30 seconds to heat. Drape around your shoulders and relax.
Light touch: Sun printing cyanotypes. Gather natural materials from hedgerows or your garden, maybe the park. Find soft grasses and small sticks, different shaped leaves and flower heads. Arrange them under a piece of clear plastic to keep them in place.
Slip a piece of cyanotype* paper under your finds and expose to sunshine for five to ten minutes. Watch until the paper changes colour, from solid blue to a paler cream. Wash your print in clean water to fix.
*available in art shops
Some with a rake Use rakes, combs and forks to make marks and patterns on cloth. Drag, dot, roll and swirl your tools in the wet paint. Sing as you work: Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green, When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen: Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so? ‘Twas mine own heart, dilly dilly, that told me so. Call up your men, dilly dilly, set them to work, Some with a rake, dilly dilly, some with a fork; Some to make hay, dilly dilly, some to thresh corn, Whilst you and I, dilly dilly, keep ourselves warm.
Memory houses: fabric and sticks Collect old clothes, bed sheets and scrap material. Cut small nicks about 5cm apart and tear fabric into strips. Different fabric will rip differently, and make different noises as you tear it. It’s fun to run backwards while ripping the strips. Experiment with the fabric in the wind. Run fast, tie the pieces to sticks. Use six longer sticks to create a teepee structure. Tie them at the top and spread them out at the base to ensure stability. Weave the fabric strips around and between the sticks to create the walls of the structure. Make sure you leave one section uncovered as a door. See who can fit inside.
Lavender laundry: staining socks Wash socks in water with dried lavender. When they are soaked, give them a squeeze. Roll the socks from tip to toe and tie string tightly around the roll. Take summer berries and squish them using hands and bare feet. How does it feel? What happens to the berries? Pour the mixture onto a sheet of muslin, pick up the edges and tie it off. Give the contents a squeeze over a large pot and collect the juice that runs through the fabric. Add the socks to the berry juice*, stir and leave to soak up the colour for an hour or so. Undo the string and unroll your socks to see the patterns you have made.
*if you want the stain to be permanent you will need to heat the liquid collected and add salt.
So familiar: Battersea Lavender, a plant, a smell, a memory; so familiar that Nicholas Culpepper wrote in the Complete Herbal of 1653: Being an inhabitant almost in every garden, it is so well known, that it needs 1 no description. Culpepper went on to list the benefits and uses of this common shrub, from its petals to the oil in its leaves. Commonly used to aid insomnia, reduce anxiety and depression, lavender is also found in flavourings, cosmetics and perfumes. The scent of lavender might be recognisable but we are becoming more accustomed to the smell of its chemical cousin, used in everything from furniture polish to face cream and detergent for our washing machines. It is our sense of smell more than any other that acts as an emotional cue and this industrial odour evokes a feeling of maternal love closely connected to our idea of what is safe and clean. The link between lavender and laundry goes back further, the origin of its name a clue – lavender comes from the Latin ‘to wash’ laver, lavar, lavaggio. Small bags of its dried flowers,
tied with ribbon are the stuff of childhood memory, slipped into drawers for moth protection and as a reminder of our perceptual ecology. It is the peculiar power of flowers that while they are universal and spread their species over the world, they invoke in the beholder the dearest and most cherished memories. The historic connection between Battersea and lavender farming has been all but forgotten though the plant’s silvery foliage is evident in many of the gardens that border the park. Those who take the 345 bus will travel past Lavender Hill Police Station – known also to drivers who use the hill as cut through to the A3 – it was here that sunny banks of lavender once grew. The View From Lavender Hill, painted by Robert Westall in 1848 shows corridors of purple and green that were known as Battersea Fields and in the distance is painted the newly built pumping station – a glimpse of a landscape about to change irrevocably. Battersea Park opened its gates in 1858 incorporating Battersea Fields and Battersea Common as part of Queen Victoria’s Commission for Improving the Metropolis. The marshland, fields
and alehouses and were quickly replaced by formal planting and Victorian villas that shaped the area’s new identity. It is hard not to draw parallels between this rapid transformation of the physical and social landscape of the area and the current pace of development around Battersea Power Station. Both Pump House Gallery and the Chesterton Children’s Centre are similarly in a moment of flux and as a visiting artist I was keen to look not only to the area’s past but also to its future, forging new associations and making memories. Much may have changed, and continue to do so, but for now it is in the gardens, the borders of the park and box planting of new builds, that we can find traces of the plant that once held the fortunes of the people of Battersea.
The Small Miracle, Paul Gallico, 1961 Complete Herbal, Nicholas Culpeper, 1653
This project was made possible by Wandsworth Art Services. Special thanks to Anneke Kuipers at Pump House Gallery and the team at Chesterton Children’s Centre. Thanks also to all the participating children, parents and carers for their curiosity, enthusiasm and care.
Joanna Brinton, 2019