Over Summer 2025, I took part in 26 Bridges, a project by writers’ organisation 26, pairing writers with artists to explore the bridges across the Thames, the results auctioned to raise money for University College London Hospitals towards the funding of a clinical specialist nurse to assist skin cancer patients.
From a joyous creative collaboration with writer Jonathan Holt, I produced a lithograph of London Bridge, which went to auction. And there was much else as we explored the bridge, looked into its history and I tested visual approaches in parallel with Jonathan’s writing...
There are sketchbooks filled on sketch walks.
Following up a story that the last shops on the bridge were haberdasheries, there’s a series of drawings monoprinted with ribbon, two of them stitched into.
There’s a textile experiment bringing haberdashery and coping stones together.
There are images of the process of making and storing the lithograph: of drawing onto stone; of the gloss of shellac; of test prints on newsprint; of crisp layers of archival tissue.
In a postscript, there are sketches of the two bridge alcoves now in Victoria Park, Hackney.
So the booklet records these discoveries, experiments and processes before the work that's left is reused or recycled.
There is even a bit of bonus nerdery, which I’ve used on an accompanying postcard: It’s said that London’s frost fairs were made possible by ice getting stuck in the arches of the old bridge, slowing down the Thames which, wider and shallower than it is now, was already prone to freezing.
Copies of the booklet and postcard have been sent to clients, collaborators and industry friends.
