Hilary Powell

My practice is imaginative salvage - recovering hidden histories, reclaiming forgotten techniques, placing value on the overlooked and highlighting and creating the extraordinary in the everyday. This takes many forms - from a BFI collected film staging DIY Olympics on the sites of the 2012 Games to a roller skating animation beneath Archway Tower. Surreal performance combines with participation and a commitment to sharing and thinking through making seen in my recent pop-up book ‘Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley’ assembled by apprentices on a theatrical production line in an industrial site. Current work focuses on urban demolition with a radical approach to materials and traditional printmaking advanced through residencies in UCL Chemistry (Leverhulme) and East London Printmakers. I work with demolition site materials and workers putting discarded materials of urban transformation to creative use in epic portraits of the often overlooked processes and people of an ever-changing cityscape.