On Easter Sunday, I took a Tube to Lancaster Gate, for a brisk walk under the seasonally delightful blue skies of Hyde Park. West London rarely appears more fit to burst with aspirational opportunity than during these first flushes of spring. Yoga exhibitionists on pointed physical display. Unthinkable breeds of statement, trophy dogs. Skims leisurewear and 600 quid over-ear Apple headphones.
Hyde Park on Easter Sunday, 2023, was London presenting itself exactly as it wants to be seen. Rich, fit, powerful, leisurely flirtatious.
We’d booked tickets for the 2pm screening of the Steve McQueen artwork, Grenfell, at the Serpentine, with no concept of the significance of the day. The film is London presented exactly as it does not want to be seen. Ruthless, unfeeling, prizing acquisition over human safety, incapable of protecting its inhabitants, a failure, full of jumped-up administrative chiefs, high on their own power, who cannot do their jobs and refuse to take accountability for the catastrophic consequences of their actions. There is no resurrection at the end of this story.
With a sedate, measured visual punch to the stomach, McQueen guides you by the hand from the greenfield edges of the city to its most infamous tower block. A camera circles the building, picking out the blisters and bruises of the fire damage, the shattered windows and collapsed walls, the charred ruins of the building’s structure. The camera descends, capturing scraps of life. The local pub, The Pig and Whistle, an empty school, a desolate five-a-side pitch. People in white suits can be seen scuttling across its forecourt.
This is as uniquely powerful a piece of art as I can recall seeing. Watching McQueen’s work with 50 other people, whose pin-drop silence could be felt hard, reminded me of something like the feeling of living in a tower block.
The feeling of protection by the comforting proximity of so many strangers, with so many stories to tell, communicated mostly by passing glances, nods hello in shared lifts.
The art was made before Grenfell had been covered up, literally and metaphorically. McQueen grew up in its footfall, before west London’s current incarnation as a part-time playground for the super-rich.
This was a time when waiters, nurses, strippers and undergraduates could afford to live there. When young families and pensioners co-existed. Before the top one per cent siphoned off its surface grandeur, reapplied fresh white stucco to the facade and made it their backcloth.
McQueen’s Grenfell is an essential piece of art, chilling to the bone. It is a resurrection of sorts. It reanimated the livid feelings inspired by one of the London tragedies of our age, a fire which resulted in 72 unnecessary deaths, for which nobody has been prosecuted, as if the passage of time will mean people forget.
The film must become a permanent exhibit at a London gallery.
Rye Lane is a great ad for Peckham
Like most people who’ve seen the gorgeous young rom-com, Rye Lane, I fell head over heels in love with its central couple, brought to life by the supremely gifted actors David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah. Sentimental but never saccharine, funny, sweet and massively endearing.
What really surprised me, though, about the film was how much I fell in love with Peckham — the third star of the movie. Rye Lane is a proper postcode commercial for SE15, saturated in local charm and character.
Friends who’ve watched it at the Peckham Multiplex have reported back that screenings are inciting whoops and hollers of good cheer, when particular locations ease onto screen. For this week only, SE15 is my most-searched on Rightmove, the ultimate gradation of postcode approval.
