Laid To Rest: Serena Korda’s Final Procession

16 September 2011

Heavy horses, a marching band and dancers will accompany a ceremonial procession and burial of bricks in Bloomsbury this Sunday. The bricks are made from dust donated by the public for the artist Serena Korda’s Laid to Rest project, part of the Wellcome Trust’s Dirt Season, and are being buried after appearing in the exhibition ‘Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life’ at Wellcome Collection.

Laid to Rest transformed dust collected from houses, businesses and institutions into a time capsule of 500 commemorative bricks. The bricks were put on display as part of the Wellcome Collection's 'Dirt' exhibition, with each brick containing the specific dust of its contributor and imprinted with information cataloguing its origins.

The stack of bricks grew over the course of the exhibition, and the project will now come to a spectacular end as the bricks are processed through the streets of London and buried in Brunswick Square Gardens.

Laid to Rest was inspired by the commercialisation of waste in Victorian London, including the vast dust heaps of Gray's Inn Road. The dust heaps were a monument to the invisible and provided a major source of income. One of the industries to be born out of the heap was London brick-making: ash, cinders and rubbish from the heap were mixed with the mud of nearby fields to produce the humble brick. From these bricks, London built itself from its own dirt.

The procession will start at 15.00 near Wellcome Collection and make its way to Brunswick Square Gardens. A marching band and dancers will travel alongside heavy horses as the bricks are brought to the site of their burial, to the sound of an original score by Daniel O’Sullivan.

Three hundred copies of a limited edition commemorative publication, including a vinyl soundtrack, will be given away on the day of the procession. The artist and many of the contributors of the dust from which the bricks were made will be present to see their final laying to rest.

Laid to Rest: the procession

From 15.00, Sunday 18 September.

Start point (15.00)
The corner of Endsleigh Gardens and Taviton Street, NW1 

Procession (15.00–15.45)
Taviton Street, Tavistock Place, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square Gardens

Burial, with performance by band and dancers (15.45–16.15)
Brunswick Square Gardens, NW1

Laid to Rest is part of the Wellcome Trust's Dirt Season.

Image: A drawing of the heavy horses. Credit: Serena Korda.