Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green
This film was created for Camberwell Arts Festival's Transported project and marks the beginning of my ongoing interest in early twentieth-century popular music, archive material and moving image.
The featured song, Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green, was performed by the music hall star Gertie Millar, one of the most celebrated performers of the Edwardian stage. Noël Coward described her as "the most graceful and charming artiste I have ever seen."
The song was popular in London's music halls during the early 1900s, when Camberwell itself was home to two major music halls. Today, those music halls no longer exist, and there is no direct route from Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green. Elephant and Castle now serves as the interchange, making the journey in the song part of a vanished London.
Alongside the film, I created a series of posters installed at bus stops and Underground stations around Camberwell, reconnecting the historical journey described in the song with the present-day city.
The work was commissioned as part of Transported, Camberwell Arts Festival's 2013 programme exploring journeys, transformation and the ways art can transport us between places, histories and imagined worlds.
︎ → www.camberwellarts.org.uk
The featured song, Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green, was performed by the music hall star Gertie Millar, one of the most celebrated performers of the Edwardian stage. Noël Coward described her as "the most graceful and charming artiste I have ever seen."
The song was popular in London's music halls during the early 1900s, when Camberwell itself was home to two major music halls. Today, those music halls no longer exist, and there is no direct route from Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green. Elephant and Castle now serves as the interchange, making the journey in the song part of a vanished London.
Alongside the film, I created a series of posters installed at bus stops and Underground stations around Camberwell, reconnecting the historical journey described in the song with the present-day city.
The work was commissioned as part of Transported, Camberwell Arts Festival's 2013 programme exploring journeys, transformation and the ways art can transport us between places, histories and imagined worlds.
︎ → www.camberwellarts.org.uk