Michele Fuirer
For curio, Michele Fuirer placed 5 convex mirrors with words about looking strategically along Hanbury Street.
'Speculate' faced west towards the city and reflected the newly built skyscrapers and sites of 'urban regeneration'. 'Curious' faced east, down the length of the street, reflecting another reality of the area. Two mirrors further down the street had the words Survey/Regard on them and were placed opposite buildings where people actually live. These are not salubrious, loft-style apartments. They are unaspirational flats, shabby and poor. The people who live in them, predominately Bengali.
So this was a golden opportunity. You could use these mirrors to completely turn your back on the street and watch people in the houses opposite going about their daily lives without any engagment at all... the perfect tourist vehicle.
For me, this work recalled the Mass Observation Survey done in the 1930s in that very area, in the days when it was predominately Jewish. Cambridge students came down to the East end to observe Jewish people in their natural habitat in order to answer the question: what do Jewish people do to create anti-Semitism? The students never spoke to their subjects. They "just observed".
The final work on the street was opposite Meraz cafe, where Martin Parker's work could be ordered off the menu, called 'Spectate'.
