This April, people from across London have been pouring into Southwark to see an exhibition. It hasn’t hosted at the Tate or the White Cube, but at a woman’s flat on the eighth floor of the dilapidated Aylesbury Estate.
“I decided to have an exhibition because I think it is the time to start debating council housing… because we know people are desperate for council housing and we keep losing it all over the country.”
Sixty-four-year-old Aysen moved into her flat on the 2,758-apartment Walworth estate with her late sister in 1993. She immediately fell in love with the place.
High up on Wendover Block, with a huge kitchen window offering panoramic views across London, she said it was a dream come true. But twelve years later, in 2005, Southwark Council decided to demolish it, saying that the poorly maintained blocks would be too expensive to refurbish.
They opted for a huge redevelopment involving investment from various private developers, which is now well underway.
Since then the estate has steadily emptied out and nowadays it resembles an almost post-apocalyptic shell.
Just a handful of residents potter through its gloomy corridors and empty walkways.
Aysen campaigned against redevelopment and all these years later. She marched on political offices, held demonstrations and galvanised leaseholders and tenants against the plans.
Her exhibition, which opened in her flat from Friday, April 14 to Sunday, April 23, is a continuation of that campaign.
It has now been extended and will be open from Saturday to Monday, from 4pm to 9pm, between April 29 and May 1, and between May 6 and May 8.
From the outset, the exhibition gives visitors a memorable experience. To get there, people go to Wendover Block on Thurlow Street and follow a series of arrows stuck to the walls.
They lead you through a maze of empty stairwells and corridors, right to the exhibition’s front door.
Inside the flat, the walls are plastered head to toe in old old campaign posters, yellowed newspaper articles, and photos of protests.
One framed poster declares the result of a 2001 ballot in which 73 per cent of residents voted against plans to transfer the estate to a private housing group.
For Aysen, the fact the Aylesbury is now being bulldozed and redeveloped by a host of private developers represents a “failure of democracy”.
The exhibition also features a cinema in the bathroom and various photos and artworks. In the toilet, there is even an anti-shrine dedicated to Southwark Council’s role in the demolition, with a particular focus ex-Council Leader Peter John.
Aysen has been shown around the newly built flats which she could move into, but says they are “dark and don’t get any light”.
Asked what it’s been like living on an estate which feels more like a ghost town with each passing month, Aysen said: “It’s really saddens me because I remember how we used to live here with my neighbours in a wonderful place – the whole community.
“But just now it’s quiet with no children playing. It’s just a really sad place.”