50.00 GBP
The Putney Debates Stone
Collage on Thames river stone, antique paper, bookbinding fabric, archival ink, waxed thread
Assemblage inspired by the Putney Debates of 1647 which took place at the edge of the River Thames in London. The Debates have been associated with the conception of British democracy.
During the English civil war and just before the execution of King Charles I, soldiers from Oliver Cromwell's New Army and radical Levellers argued for universal suffrage, an egalitarian society and civil liberties in a meeting held in the Putney parish church of St. Mary the Virgin by the river Thames in 1647.
Weathered paper and bookbinding fabric fragments are layered on a river stone collected from the Thames foreshore near St Mary's church. The words written with black archival ink on antique paper belong to officer agitators Clarke and Audley:
"I presume that all people and all nations whatsoever have a liberty and power to alter and change their constitutions if they find them to be weak and infirm.."
"I would die in any place in England in asserting that it is the right of every freeborn man to elect, according to the rule, that which concerns all ought to be debated by all."
Tied up with waxed thread this London Rock is a "stone message" - a history snippet with words still relevant today.
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Care Instructions: Please keep this piece out of direct sunlight and sources of heat and humidity.
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The work of collage artist Lito Apostolakou hosted in Inklinks discusses narratives of time, words, memory and history. Lito uses antique papers, archival ink, vintage prints and worn stationery to create collages on found objects like stones, wooden boards and writing cases.
LONDON ROCKS is a project that explores the river Thames as a historical and literary narrative. The London Rocks installation will be exhibited in Creative Histories conference, organised by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts, Bristol 19-21 July 2017.
Lito works from her home studio in Muswell Hill, London.
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