To Do List p60-61

 

Waking Up

Waking Up (one hundred and five times) from Kit Merritt on Vimeo.

Another ongoing project. This one is 35mm slides. A reference to the lost art of the holiday slideshow.

Started in 2011, I’ve documented mornings woken alone, triggered by a career move which meant travelling away from home a lot.  I’ve recently stopped the travel, so future shots will inevitably be of more familiar surroundings and less frequently taken. The work is intended as a repetitive act. The monotony of travelling for business; the blandness of international hotels versus the richness of time spent alone.

This of course doesn’t account for every slide though. Each carousel is interspersed with familiar ceilings; home and the homes of others and the occasional strangeness of not knowing where you are.

The film above documents 1 to 105 mornings, dating from 9th September 2011 to the 28th January 2013 (my last trip) The list has since reached 108.

To Do List p58-59

To Do List p56-57

To Do List p54-55

Something from August

August 2012,

Nostalgia has kicked in.

A heady mixture of allergy tablets, a pint, a cigarette, half a bottle of prosecco. Night time orange glow from the living room, my partner fiddling with a guitar. And up on the roof, a plastic-burn smell from the neighbouring roof-bonfire, the twinkling lights from the toy-town double deckers, a distance sea of ants traipsing round the perimeters of the stadium. A heavy low yellowed half-moon hanging in the hazy, electrical blue of the late night sky above east London.

Again, its about a lack of knowing. Another moment of chlostrophobic irritation mingled with the all-to-familiar fear of leaving, in a setting that has changed so much, but remained my constant, anchoring love for the last 3 years.

My home, my biggest adventure and the bane of my life, all encompassed in the creaking walls and leaky ceilings of this run-down, propped-up, and (god knows how) listed, Hackney Wick warehouse.

This is my fourth summer here and each seems to have brought with it a recurring sense of drama. The most pleasant possible time you can be here is the summer. We are on the top floor, with high-pitched eaves, the hotness and lightness comparable to that of a greenhouse. But there’s always something else, some poignant upheaval to triumph over and the beginnings of a new adventure on the horizon;

The first summer, I moved here broke and heartbroken and set about major excavations to build myself ‘something new’.

The second, residential bliss metamorphosed into tempestuous love and ruin. Then new love, new ambition, new direction.

The third summer was end of the affair.  The beginning of a new career a home, a family.

The fourth; The Olympics, perfectly timed with the announcement of the rent increase that will finally see us out of the door.

This is not an exceptional night by any means, just another early August evening, sat on the roof with my thoughts. Watching life below snake around the newly built roadways, the twinkling lights are now from passenger vehicles rather than cranes, the background murmurs are made by crowds not diggers. The Olympics is an already fond, but distant memory. The future? Its open for debate, but my days here are now numbered.

Kit Merritt Solo Show – As Long as it Lasts

I’ve got a solo show coming up next Wednesday. 

 

PV is 6 – 9pm

 

All works in the show have been made in, or about, this space. So it’s fitting that it marks the final exhibition at 92 White Post Lane and our departure from the warehouse. 

 

It would be great to see you there and give 92 White Post Lane the send-off it deserves. 

 

Kit x