On a foggy day in 1948 a ship carrying some 500 passengers from the West Indies docked in the shores of Tilbury in the Thames estuary. That ship, named SS. Windrush, was the first in a series of ships that lead to an immigration wave that forever changed the cultural and ethnographic landscape of London and the many boroughs that surround it. My project provisionally titled Islanders depict an allegorical corner of East London where many immigrants settled, and explore the many inhabitants of this world in the edges of London, where the lives of the diaspora and locals intertwine. This body of work, still in progress aims to question the ideas of displacement and home, and who is able to call themselves citizens of this country. In depiciting these people I create a world of my own, in which I reflect at my own psychological dramas and experiences of being an immigrant myself, reflecting on theirs, but also my own sense of isolation and suspension. John Szarkowski on his seminal exhibition wrote: "My aim here is not to reform life, but to know it, not to persuade, but to understand it." This is a quote that inspired my wanderings and the depicting of my imagined Borough, and the people I encounter along the way, in parks, on the streets, in shops and garages. "All these things happen in the blazing summer under the trees in the park on the grass with daffodils and tulips in full bloom and a sky of blue oh it does really be beautiful then to hear the birds whistling and see the green leaves come back on the trees and in the night the world turn upside down and everyone hustling that is life that is London …" - Sam Selvin