‘He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. [...] He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter, to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.’ — Walter Benjamin, Excavation and Memory (1932)
Turning Over Soil is Anna Curzon Price's first solo exhibition. Bringing together mixed-media paintings and archival research, the exhibition reflects on the ideals and shortcomings of post-war social architecture.
The artist’s studio is in a high-rise tower block in Camden called Langdale: one of 49 residential towers that form the Regent’s Park Estate. Once considered a symbol of late-Modernist optimism rising from the wreckage of the Blitz, the estate’s construction was painted by Frank Auerbach in the 1950s.
Like many other contemporaneous developments, shifts in economic policy and social stigmatisation saw the estate fall into gradual disrepair. Situated on the edge of the HS2 construction site, the majority of residents in the north of the estate, including Langdale’s residents, were rehoused by Camden Council in 2023. The vacant flats were then repurposed as affordable artists' studios. Slated for demolition, Langdale now exists in a state of slow, inevitable decay.
Traces of the building and the wider estate reverberate throughout this body of work. The dimensions of many of the paintings derive from its doors and window frames. Working on unstretched canvas and wet mulberry paper, the artist uses frottage to record its surfaces—from pebble-dashed walls to radiator panels and vents.
Strong lines in oil stick and acrylic establish an architectonic structure, sometimes derived from observational drawings, sometimes lifted from the estate’s original plans. These rigid marks are paired with expressive scribbles and sweeping gestures that go beyond geometric constraint.
Each building in the estate has a distinctive visual identity. This is expressed through the colour-coding of communal areas and architectural details. The artist’s palette draws from the bright-blues of Langdale’s doors and balconies and the red and yellow tiles found in neighbouring towers.
Informed by Walter Benjamin’s writing on cultural memory, this exhibition is a palimpsest of the Regent’s Park Estate. Looking backwards and forwards, it explores the relationship between legacy and disappearance.
A presentation of Curzon Price’s archival research and a new essay by Owen Hatherley will accompany the exhibition, alongside a programme of artist-led events and workshops.
