Social housing, gentrification, East London, and Brutalist architecture

Having recently moved to east London, I've been looking around at the buildings and building sites around me, and am feeling really inspired by the solid, linear appearance that is common to both social housing and new housing blocks that are contributing to the gentrification of the area. And I live in such a housing block that is doing that gentrification - and feeling really aware of the strange position I feel like I am in because of that, and feeling like documenting it is, in some strange way, may lessen my liminal position.

These remind me of the work of Australian artist Jeffery Smart:

Portrait of Clive James 1991-1992 (Art Gallery of New South Wales)

Head Office 2002-2003 Jeffery Smart

Study for Holiday 1969–1970 Jeffery Smart

I really like how drafted these are. They play with line and space, there is quiet desperation in the architectural studies, that play both with the image and the text, in the titles. 'Portraits' that are more shipping container than person, and the bleak reality of an apartment block juxtaposing with our ideas about holidays.

This is something I'd like to play with, both within my still life paintings for part two of Practice of Painting, and within my drawing practice.

All photographs in this post were taking by me.