Dalton and Deller in Waltham Forest

Pen Dalton's printed wall installation 'Matrilineal Descent' at Tokarska Gallery uses Dalton's own family history to raise issues identity, gender, migration and motherhood. Originally designed for an academic conference on identity in Northern Ireland and informed by writings on identity from Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall that regard ‘the self’ as formed within specific historic, cultural and social contexts, 'Matrilineal Descent' is a powerful, personal piece where the personal informs the wider work and the issues it raises. This installation is complemented by a series of text-based prints - copies of which are in the V&A - that draw on feminist psychoanalytic/linguistic theory – notably that of Julia Kristeva - in exploring understandings of motherhood.

Through her work in art education Dalton has argued "that modernist art education has been and continues to be a complex of gendered discursive practices: saturated through with masculine and feminine divisions and hierarchies which in turn produce gendered identities as hierarchical and working class girls as subordinate, ready to assume subordinate positions in the wider social and
economic culture."

Identity is also the theme at the William Morris Gallery which hosts Jeremy Deller's English Magic. English Magic reflects "the roots of much of Deller’s work, focusing on British society - its people, icons, myths, folklore and its cultural and political history." He has addressed events from the past, present and an imagined future and worked with a varied range of collaborators including archeologists, musicians, bird sanctuaries, prisoners and painters.

His film, also entitled English Magic, forms a major part of the exhibition, bringing together many of the ideas behind the works and featuring the visual and thematic elements that reflect Deller's interest in the diverse nature of British society and its broad cultural, socio-political and economic history. The music is performed by the Melodians Steel Orchestra from South London and was recorded in Studio 2 of Abbey Road Studios in London:

The William Morris Gallery, the place of Morris birth, has recently been transformed to create a new world-class destination and international centre of excellence for the study of Morris, where visitors can enjoy the most intense and personal encounter with one of the foremost creative artists and original thinkers of the nineteenth century.

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Jeremy Deller - English Magic.