Previous winners of the Deptford X Award (formerly MacDonald Egan Award)

2009: Scape Boat, Patrick Hackett

Sick of being in a financial crisis and waiting for the recession to bottom out, Hackett is trying to get some perspective on how the financial system works and where all the money went. 

www.patrickhackett.co.uk

2008:  Gold for Deptford, Foreign Investment

One hundred small objects that it finds on Deptford High Street, record where each one was found, and will be gilded with 18-carat gold leaf on the 25th of September at the Deptford Arms Pub. Visitors and bystanders will be invited to carry out the gilding, assisted by the fi team. The hundred gold articles will be on view in the pub from till daily for the duration of Deptford X, then each one will be carefully returned to wherever it came from – whether it was in the gutter, pavement, or road. In an almost alchemical process, a re-distribution of gold takes place in the heart of Deptford. 

2007:  Via Dolorosa, Bea Denton

This site-specific work, Via Dolorosa draws upon the narrative aspects of the 14 Stations of the Cross. The images are taken from one of the 21st Century’s most well-known and controversial TV series, Channel 4’s Big Brother.

It is an observation of a new 'religion' that worships Celebrity and celebrates auto-idolatry, public persecution and suffering.

The work provokes uncomfortable questions about our belief systems, in the context of a media-driven, quick fix, and instant-satisfaction society.

The bridge alludes to the tradition of the Stations of the Cross as a journey or pilgrimage made by Christians. The work supplies an uninvited intervention into the viewer’s conscience during the course of an otherwise ordinary journey across the bridge from Deptford to Greenwich , transforming the location into a place of contemplation.

2006:  Urban Soil, Karin Ludmann

11 automatic antennas are hidden in a heap of soil.  The antennas are in plastic pipes which are put in the heaped up ground.  Controlled by an electric circuit the telescopes extend and retract accidentally.  The visitors just perceive telescopes driving out, respectively disappearing in the soil.

The soil comes from the area where the installation is shown.

Separated from their proper function these antennas became in this context strange mutations which imitate vegetable sprouting and rotting in a very rudimentary, mechanical way.

The antennas resemble exotic plants which are adapted to their natural environment that means to the urban traffic.