Chinese Freemason Society, 48 Poplar High Street
I have walked and cycled up and down Poplar High Street several times over the years. Most recently, I moved my studio to Canning Town, and I love that the streets I have been researching are now part of my daily cycling route to the studio. The address 48 Poplar High Street still exists, but it is now occupied by the Dingle Lane council houses, built by the London County Council (LCC) and designed by its Architect’s Department in the late 1950s. The buildings are oriented west–east, making it difficult to imagine exactly where the building of the Chinese Freemason Society once stood.
When I came to this street to photograph the location for my piece, I felt disoriented. The Poplar High Street that exists in the archival records has changed. Despite its name, it now feels more like a quiet backstreet, with the high-rises of Canary Wharf increasingly dominating the southern skyline. For some reason, I was particularly drawn to the fence around the Dingle Lane scheme — perhaps because it faces north, and part of it may overlap with the site where the Chinese Freemason Society once stood. A string of dried leaves hanging over the fence caught my attention, and I knew instantly that I wanted to incorporate it into the work.
Using a similar workflow to my other pieces, I created a “forged” reconstruction of the building using archival photographs and Stable Diffusion XL. It appeared as peeled paint on the fence, as if forming a portal to the past.