IN THE METROLAND GALLERY: RUSHES 01.2: The Park (Dancing on the Rubble of Empire) /Arwa Aburawa & Turab Shah

Exhibition: 21 November –  20 December 2025

Open: Thurs–Saturday 12–5pm

Launch: 20 Nov, 6–8pm

RUSHES is an exhibition and research programme, takes its name from both the unmediated footage reviewed during the making of a motion picture – the first positive prints from negatives shot the day prior – and the slow-growing, rhizomatic plants that seed in wetlands and thrive in inhospitable conditions. Rushes is responsive to Metroland’s curatorial projects, a sharing of initial steps, a way of visualising intentions and commitments, and a method of collaging; displaying ongoing research in real-time. 

Rushes 01.2 brings together film, archival fragments and cartographic traces to examine the dismantling of the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition and the afterlives of empire that prevail in the landscape of Northwest London. The exhibition is centred around The Park (Dancing on the Rubble of Empire), a new moving image work by Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah. Combining digital video, 16mm film, archival footage and direct animation, the film is shaped by material from Brent Archives and conversations with residents and archivists, and uncovers hidden traces of the Empire Exhibition in the local area on its centenary year.

The exhibition shifts focus from the Empire Exhibition’s spectacle to its residue: buried debris, reclassified paperwork, and a fading recollection among local residents. Playing concurrently in the exhibition will be The Fall of a Great City (1927). Originally filmed as newsreel footage by Topical Budget, it depicts the destruction of the Empire Exhibition’s pavilions, each erected as a stand-in for a colonial territory. Shown here slowed-down and looping, the razing is suspended, holding the pavilions in uneasy stasis, between ruin and preservation, neither demolished nor allowed to decay. Alongside, a selection of reproduced correspondence; rubble transfer records, planning documents and demolition papers – related to the transfer of over 250,000 tons of debris from Wembley to Northala Fields – is presented on multiple paperstocks, tracing the weight and transparency of bureaucracy and the processing of matter across borough lines.

Extending the concerns of Rushes 01.1 — which made visible the entanglement of image-making, labour and resistance through the Grunwick Strike, the Grunwick Processing Lab, and the solidarities formed on its picket lines — this second chapter turns towards other sites of processing. Rushes 01.2 locates two intertwined forms of processing: the demolition, conveyance and burial of imperial material, and the administrative labour that makes such actions appear orderly, neutral, and inevitable.

Aburawa and Shah’s film, The Park (Dancing on the Ruble of Empire), was co-commissioned by Brent Museum & Archives and Film London through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), London’s Screen Archives (LSA) and Film Hub London, part of the BFI Film Audience Network. Supported by Arts Council England, The National Lottery, The National Lottery Heritage Fund and BFI National Archive.

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RUSHES – a new exhibition and research programme

An presentation of research bringing together archival material, film, and visual ephemera that reflect on the 1976-78 Grunwick Strike and the wider organising culture that surrounded them.