Description
Object description
image: A view of a crossroads from the left hand near corner. Ahead the road runs across a railway bridge with high brick
walls and then downhill beyond. Beyond the bridge is a large building, painted with the name 'RAILWAY TAVERN'. The chimneys and rooftops
of other houses can be seen running off to the right. The road across the bridge is lined with bollards, and a street lamp on the right
hand side has signs for children crossing, and for a minor road joining from the left. On the left hand corner before the bridge, a tree
planted in the pavement leans over to the left despite its stake.
Physical description
From the series 'The Mildmay Drawings'
Label
'In the summer of 1983 ... I discovered the old train station in Mildmay Grove and started what became a set of ten
drawings of the section of line between Canonbury and Kingsland Road. It was while doing the second drawing that I realized the line I was
looking at was used several times a week to take nuclear waste from Sizewell [nuclear power station] to Sellafield [nuclear fuel
reprocessing plant]. Over the next six weeks, I found it impossible to escape that realization, and it inextricably meshed with every mark
I made.' [Eric Rimmington, from the exhibition catalogue 'A World's Waste: Cumbria, Sellafield and Nuclear Reprocessing, A Brewery Arts
Centre Touring Exhibition' 1987.]
The artist made this series of drawings at a time of intense anti-nuclear protests against both nuclear weapons and the nuclear power
industry. The 1979 decision by the British Government to allow American Cruise Missiles to be sited in the UK sparked a series of marches
and protests. These included the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, started in 1981 and which was at its height in 1983 when the missiles
finally arrived at the Berkshire base.
The accident at Three Mile Island, a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, USA, also in 1979, heightened fears about the safety of nuclear
power. Nuclear waste and its transport and storage continues to be a focus of protest and anxiety. The Greater London Assembly
commissioned a report into the safety of nuclear waste trains in 2001 for this reason.
Inscription
Eric Rimmington August 1985