A close collaboration between the architect and artist John Booth makes an imaginative and highly coloured exhibition relaying the history of Greenwich Peninsula
As potted history lessons go, Up in Smoke gets full marks for colour and engagement. Created by architecture and ideas studio CAN with artist John Booth, the exhibition is a vivid installation that successfully serves up succinct learnings for older visitors in a jolly setting that is clearly very popular with young children.
The exhibition is the 2024 design commission for NOW Gallery, located on London’s Greenwich Peninsula close to The O2, and is the tale of five chimneys that once, at different times, occupied the site. Tasked with creating an interactive commission in the 7m-high space, CAN director Mat Barnes – a former RIBAJ Rising Star – and Booth sought inspiration in the history of the Peninsula itself, which was marshland before its industrial transformation, and more recent reinvention for entertainment, education and housing.
Trawling through historical imagery and aware that many present-day visitors may have no knowledge of the site’s industrial past, the design team hit upon the idea of telling the history of the site through now-gone chimneys that live on only in etchings and photographs. The result is Up in Smoke, an assembly of boldly patterned reinterpretations of the chimneys stretching up into the lofty gallery space. Each is accompanied by an archive image and brief text, and, courtesy of the colourful aesthetic, has a distinctly beach hut/seaside pier vibe.
CAN and Booth both make bold use of colour in their practice, and had been looking to work together for some time. In the collaboration for Up in Smoke, while CAN naturally led on the 3D form of the timber structures and Booth on the vivid surface design, the two worked very closely together on all aspects. The design of the installation plays with scale and encourages youngsters to interact with the structures by variously going into, up, around or through them.
Despite being largely redundant in the domestic sphere, chimneys continue to be a highly emotive symbol of the home – Barnes points out that it’s often the first thing a child draws on a house. In the exhibition, the oldest chimney is from a late 17th century gunpowder magazine, shown in a 1738 etching. Next is a hexagonal chimney that references the 19th century Enderby’s Wharf, the site of a briefly flourishing submarine cable manufacturer. Visitors can enter the bottom of this structure, which is set in a plinth of waves. There’s a chimney from the East Greenwich Gas Works, the last gas works to be built in London in the late 19th century. Moving into the last century, visitors can climb stairs up to a look out platform over the gallery topped with domestic chimneys – inspired by a 1973 photo of a now demolished terrace of houses against a backdrop of the gas works.
We learn that the peninsula was the biggest producer by volume of gas for a single site in the world in 1965 – the sort of nugget that Barnes hopes visitors will be surprised and interested to learn. A structure inspired by a 1973 photo of a chimney from that era completes the exhibition. Rising high, it is inset with three brightly-painted ceramics by Booth of houses with flowers in their chimneys.
Barnes hopes that Up in Smoke ‘gives something to all ages’ through both the light-touch potted history and the inventive use of art and design.
A hands-on craft and drawing area at the foot of one chimney gives visitors the chance to consider future visions and uses of chimneys, using donated materials from the adjacent Greenwich Design District. Judging by the results on display, it’s sparked imaginations and is clearly producing some interesting interpretations, including a Pride chimney, a chimney showing support for Palestine, and another greened with vegetation.