Hilary Powell, Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley, 2023

AiR’s The Valley Room

Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley charts an alternative moving history of the area transformed to stage the London 2012 Olympic Games. It is a handheld animation of regeneration that is both local and universal, tracking and reimagining industrial decline, mutating place names, flora and fauna and local legends.   

Ten years ago Hilary Powell made fifty-one beautiful pop-up books on a public production line in an old print-works in Stratford. In The Valley Room she will reflect on this work, presenting ‘Popuppopup’ with the finished book alongside the book-in-parts, source material and films. As one of many extraordinary works Powell has made in the valley before/during/after the Olympics, this is a moment to consider the importance of a collective making process and how the book resonates today in the valley and beyond.