As part of our ongoing Grow At Home programme of online events where we host talks with local artists we meet Emily Hana, east London based Painter and Sculptor who works with light; seeing it as a three dimensional material and how it can change our perception and interaction with a space.

Her most recent series of paintings is centred around the gentrification of London’s warehouse and creative districts, documenting how we turn things we see as ‘dirty’ or ‘dilapidated’ into polished objects of desire, barely recognisable from the original. In line with this subject matter, she takes discarded materials from gentrified areas and breathes new life into them, turning trash left out to rot into objects of beauty and value. Upon first glance, these pieces have no connection to their roots, but upon further observation, their imperfect, tattered pasts peer through. Imperfect and rough, cold and damp, and yet warm in spirit; entrenched in community and memories. Given a new façade, a fresh sheen, but no fresh paint job taking away from their underground, grimy, yet beautiful, beginnings.

This event is part of a cultural programme of events celebrating the creativity and diversity of Grow’s events programme and is supported by the Government’s Cultural Recovery Grant, administered by Arts Council England.