You could easily miss 10 Greatorex Street, off Whitechapel High Street in London’s East End. The graffitied shop fronts looked almost abandoned as we walked down it on a warm August evening. But behind the blanked-out windows was a hive of activity, housing not only the Greatorex Gallery but also ten studios created by artist Suki Jobson some six years ago.
On this particular night, it was the venue of Take Only What You Can Carry, an event in aid of Vsesvit, a Ukraine solidarity collective, which raises funds for medical equipment. Vsesvit translates as “the universe”.
The word embodies the inclusive, community spirit of the Ukrainian democracy movement at the heart of the Maidan uprising in the winter of 2013, which continues to inspire Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination. I found out about the event thanks to Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, to which Real Democracy Movement is affiliated.
“Take Only What You Can Carry” is taken from the title of a poem by Serhiy Zhadan, Ukraine’s most popular writer. The Starobilsk-born Zhadan joined the 13th Khartia Brigade of the Ukraine National Guard in June this year.
But back to Whitechapel. The gloomy industrial entrance opened to an inner court and a stall featuring beautiful hand-crafted objects, books, zines and poetry offered by artists to help raise funds. A long pitch-black corridor gave onto a brilliant top-lit gallery. On a low table was the traditional Ukrainian welcome offering: a loaf of bread, salt and vodka.
It was a gentle introduction to an alternative reality, dominated by a representation of a bombed out Kyiv street. Noel Faucett’s enormous billboard drew you into the devastation of Ukraine’s capital city after Russian bombing in 2022, as though you had suddenly woken up in the centre of the city, picking your way through shattered glass and broken metal.
A haunting moment saw Dariya Hutsalyuk, Marley Brown, Polina Sluhina, Ievgeniia Lukash, Anna Artiushenko, Mariia Pastukh and Sam Phillipart chanting traditional polyphonic songs lead a procession through the corridor into the light-filled gallery, with Rory Geraghty on the fiddle. Faucett’s 20 or so photos were the key components in a multi-sensory surround sounds and textures, all bearing witness to the destruction wreaked by the Russian invasion but also the spirit of Ukrainian resistance. He explained how he found a way to bring home the fortitude of the people without exploiting their suffering.
“We had only had four weeks to put the show together: to come up with the concept and a way to get it done and pull it off,” he explained. He had to prepare the photographs, organise the huge billboard wall as well as handcrafting zine-style books in a remarkable combination of poetry, writing and images. “It’s a mix of folklore, indigenous culture and the preservation of art, writing and music as a way of defending your culture against assimilation into a different space,” he said. “So yeah, people have reacted very, very well to the book I’ve put together.”
He paced around a bit nervously, as he had a short window to complete more zines as the show re-opened for its final day. But he was pleased: “As I said on the opening night this was an opportunity to take the cause of Ukraine to a wider audience. I keep on going to these events here and it’s often the same very tired, very broke Ukrainians that show up and they’ve been doing it for two and a half years. It’s so difficult for them.”
Faucett first travelled to Ukraine as a documentary photographer and journalist in the spring of 2022. “I was following the whole build-up and when was announced that the invasion was happening, I felt I had to go. I did some research and found there were some heavyweight people from Magnum already there and US photojournalist Ron Haviv was making amazing work.
“And I was just going as a freelancer, but I simply couldn’t balance that with the humanitarian side of what was happening. You had millions of people fleeing from the east to the west and crossing the border. I just couldn’t justify it. As a solo freelancer, I’m an extra passenger on a seat in a car and I am an extra mouth to feed, and that’s a liability for people who are already suffering. So I decided not to go.”
Then he heard about Mariia Pastukh from Vsesvit, and her husband Val Rajenkov who is Lithuanian. Vsesvit promote grassroots humanitarian initiatives and are instrumental in raising funds for a group of people that were building accommodation and refurbishing old buildings for internally displaced people. They had raised over £30,000 worth of medical kit, but they had no way to get it from London to Ukraine.
“I went with them to their photo book library and arches in Peckham, and soon we were packing boxes with ambulance bags, blood clotting agents and tourniquets. And it was just a bizarre, surreal experience.
“And I said, I’ll drive it. So packed my car with a load of kit and drove into Ukraine, and that was well, like a little way of sort of balancing the ethical scales in my mind. And so, I stayed for four weeks I stayed with Maria’s brother and met the family.
“Vsesvit is a voluntary self-organisation, not necessarily from the government: people know they have to do it themselves. That’s what you saw from day one. All the civilians had mobilised and created this huge chain of humanitarian aid where clothing, food, medicine was being delivered to the people who need it. I’ve never seen anything like it really.
“Since 2022 I did a lot of work in London with the Ukrainian diaspora. I think the main concept here was to try and sever that disconnect about the way that we’re consuming news now. It’s become this bizarre form of Tinder.” Like doom scrolling? I ask. “Yeah, and people can put, like, a little crying emoji and a broken heart emoji. So doing this wall here and bringing the street from central Kyiv into London and putting people on the street seemed like it could work well.”
Noel pointed to the huge image: “There’s a supermarket and a lot of the Ukrainians that come are from Kyiv, they will come in and taken aback at first. And they said, oh, my apartment was up on this hill. And my nan works behind this building here; I went to university over here. People are immediately struck by it. A woman that came in last night and she started crying, saying it looks just like Poland. A fantastic company called Build Hollywood installed it. They understood what I was trying to do and they got behind everything and did a stunning job.”
At present, he is completing the “Твір” zine and working on three follow-up zines focusing on other topics within Ukraine and has been approached to exhibit in Kyiv this October.
The story behind one of the most striking photos in the show
“In Lviv in 2022 this train was going to Odesa,” Noel explained. “The station was absolutely packed with people in the concourse underneath. The air was thick and hot, and it was still Covid time. People were desperate, dirty and just carrying everything. I couldn’t justify taking pictures down there. I went up onto the platform and I started seeing these windows of the train and different vignettes of life. And I started making images around this concept. I was taking pictures when I came across three young lads playing cards.
“One of them must have nudged this guy and said, oh there’s a photographer on the platform. He stood up with no shirt on and started posing, leaning back, throwing his hands up. He was just having fun, but it looks ambiguous as though he is in pain.” When the show’s curator Eva Ressel first saw it, she felt it looked like a crucifixion scene.
“So, it’s a combination of humour and pain? “I asked. “Yes, that is very prevalent in Ukraine, the dark sense of humour that they were having just getting on with things and having using that humour to survive and exist.”
Take only what you can carry, curated by Eva Ressel, was made possible through the support of Greatorex Street, Tanous Art Framers, East London Brewery, Cheerio and BUILDHOLLYWOOD.
- Noel Faucett @noelfaucett) • Instagram photos and videos
- Noel Fawcett website
- Dariya Hutsalyuk is on @readerwriternow (keep an eye out for future workshops and events)
- Vsesvit website
- Ukraine Solidarity Campaign