7. Urban Alchemy
Hilary Powell
23—27 June
UCL, see London Architecture Diary for details

Through imaginative salvage and experiments in chemical printmaking the project Urban Alchemy explores the material stories and processes of urban transformation. My Leverhulme artist residency in UCL Chemistry has allowed for a year of experimentation with and salvage of demolition site materials in a project where creative production and the poetry and politics of place combine with the science, agency and political ecology of materials.
The book itself  is a 40 page hard cover cloth-bound gilt edged volume in the traditional of an alchemical ‘book of secrets’ exposing the narratives and techniques of the transformation of these materials over this year of experimentation and exchange. It examines a core ‘family’ of demolition site materials –zinc, copper, slate, brick, stone/concrete, steel, aluminium and asbestos through photographs from the demolition site, of the materials undergoing transformation in chemistry laboratory and print studio and of the image outcomes of these creative and chemical changes. This imagery sits alongside a series of poetic narratives of each of these materials.