‘On the verge of something very big’ is a collaged text collated from archived Deptford X pamphlets, press articles and visitor feedback. These compositions form a non-linear history of Deptford and lay bare aspirations and anxieties projected onto the future of the area. Heterogeneous voices are scrambled, regrouped and collaged together. The work considers the tendency of arts and culture to be co-opted and used to fuel gentrification, examining artists’ complicity in this process and touching on the broader implications of these uneasy dynamics.
The publication insert is accompanied by a series of billboards around Deptford and New Cross, displaying fragments of promotional language lifted from articles describing the changing locality.