june-2012

in still-life photography and
sculptures made from found objects.
“I left Th e Netherlands for London
because it’s a huge creative hub, and
when I arrived everybody pointed me
towards Hackney Wick,” she says,
tinkering with work that will be
exhibited in Amsterdam later this year.
“I remember my fi rst visit, seeing
nothing but warehouses everywhere, but
eventually I found the amazing places
and people behind their walls. It’s great
to have the encouragement of
professional artists all around me.”
From the pathway behind the
nearby Stour Space, a not-for-profi t art
gallery that houses the excellent Counter
Cafe, you can begin to explore east
London’s web of waterways.
Th e Hertford Union Canal forms the
southern border of Victoria Park, one of
east London’s biggest green spaces and
home to splendid statues, memorials and
even a stone alcove from the original
32 Holland Herald
TOP
Columbia Road
Flower Market
RIGHT
Brick Lane
OPPOSITE PAGE
Liverpool Street
Station is a gateway
to Europe’s financial
capital, and its
most creative
neighbourhoods
London Bridge. Th e park’s western edge
runs alongside the Regent’s Canal, which
stretches from the Th ames through to
Little Venice in the north-west of the city.
Th is complex network can be confusing,
but a day-long excursion with the
London Bicycle Tour Company puts
things into focus.
Th eir ‘Olympics’ tour starts at
Waterloo, crosses the river at Tower
Bridge, and pedals eastwards onto the
Th ames Path in Wapping.
A century ago this district was a slum
rife with disease and overcrowding.
Suff ering terrible bomb damage during
the Second World War, it was largely
derelict until 20 years ago. Its startling
recovery is echoed right across the tour,
from the skyscraper-studded Docklands
— once a no-go zone — up to the
glittering Olympic Park.
But this gentrifi cation isn’t allconsuming
and shades of old east
London add charm and colour to the
waterways. Luxury property
developments rub shoulders with
crumbling factories; clapped-out
houseboats are docked beside mini
yachts; spray painting and stencilling
jostle for wallspace with banners
advertising high-rise riverside offi ces.
At the Shadwell Basin, the tour passes
Cable Street, where in 1936 a march by
the British Union of Fascists descended
into violence. A plaque marks the spot
where “the people of east London forced
back the march of the Blackshirts.”
Th ere’s a long, proud history of
activism and radicalism in east London
that can still be felt in the anarchist
bookshops of Whitechapel, the street art
of Shoreditch and the vegan cooperatives
of Hackney.
It’s the same tradition of nonconformism
that makes the east’s
nightlife among the most exciting in
Europe. Central London may have the
theatres and cinemas, and west London
has the museums, but the east is where
new ideas begin.