While packing some belongings from his family home in the summer of 2020, Imran Perretta found his old Blackberry handset. On it was a YouTube video forwarded by a friend in 2011. In his conversation with STIR, Perretta said that while he did not immediately know this footage would be the basis of his next exhibition, it remained at the back of his mind for the longest time. That encounter informs A Riot in Three Acts, Perretta’s solo exhibition at Somerset House Studios that reexamines the 2011 riots in London, using the arson attack on the historic Croydon-based furniture store House of Reeves, as its focal point. Placed in a small vitrine, Blackberry Bold 9700 (2010, 2024) presents the handset playing a colour YouTube video of the massive flames that engulfed the shop. It plays on a loop. By beginning this exhibition with archival footage, Perretta highlights this pivotal yet forgotten moment of civil unrest while urging viewers to reconsider its relevance today.

With this latest work, Perretta explores the complex public repercussions of racialised policing and social deprivation...

In the opening room, two vitrines stand opposite the Blackberry. The first holds a Daily Mirror newspaper from August 09, 2011, with the headline “Yob Rule” and an image of a woman leaping from a burning building. The caption describes the chaos as “the worst rioting for decades”, with police unable to control the looting and fires that spread through London and Birmingham. These riots erupted after the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on August 4, 2011, amid conflicting reports of the incident, though his family was left uninformed for over a day.

One consequence of the riots was the destruction by arson of one of two House of Reeves buildings, a family business started in Reeves Corner, Croydon in 1867. One of their buildings was restored and next to the newspaper, the other vitrine displays a miniature model of this site as it is today. There is a white picket fence, a gravel base and in the background, the lone surviving House of Reeves building. This reproduction is also a blueprint for Perretta’s larger-scale model of the site that sits in the exhibition's main room. With this work, Perretta explores the complex public repercussions of racialised policing and social deprivation, often seen in the form of youth disenfranchisement and acts of violence against the oppressive state.

In a conversation with Perretta, who is currently a Somerset House Studios resident artist, he shared that the significance of this exhibition became clear during a recent visit to Croydon, where he noticed that nothing had changed. "That was the problem. After the building burnt down and the rubble was cleared in 2011, nothing else changed. I think that's what upset me the most," the artist explained. Perretta problematises the privately owned, waste scrubland that now sits as a haunting reminder of the night. While he focuses on Reeves Corner, to Perretta, it is symbolic of a larger erosion of public space, a decade of socioeconomic turmoil and an endless yearning for change.

In the main room, the reproduction of the current Reeves Corner is similar to a film set. A painted canvas backdrop of the site is foregrounded by a bed of gravel with weeds, trees, a white picket fence, soil and planters. The scene is enhanced by scattered litter, such as a can of hairspray, bubble wrap and a broken hanger. The set-up evokes a grey London day, trees with bare branches, shrivelled leaves and decaying plants in light grey planters. The weathered building, with maroon sale signs and darkened cement edges, reflects the passage of time. Moving from one room to another, this dark and gloomy London day almost reflects the dark history of the site, allowing the image of the enormous fire to linger in the audience’s mind.

Perretta anchors this exhibition around A Requiem for the Dispossessed (2024), an approximately 40-minute long, multi-channel audio spatialised surround sound score for a string quartet, playing in the main room. Composed by Perretta, the audio is arranged by William Newell and performed by the chamber orchestra Manchester Camerata. While working on the exhibition, he was simultaneously commissioned by the Camerata and for him, the audio and exhibition found each other. He named it a "requiem", a term often associated with acts of remembrance, alluding to brutal murder as well as the impact of the riots on public spaces.

On selected weekends during the exhibition’s run, the full score is performed live by the Camerata’s string quartet. On these days, the musicians' seats are set in the centre of the room on top of the gravel with the audience surrounding them. Every tiny movement is amplified by the gravel, causing the audience to be uneasy throughout the performance in fear of disrupting it. This tension, heightened by the mesmerising music, forces constant awareness of one's surroundings, reminiscent of epic or Brechtian theatre.

A Riot in Three Acts consistently asks for this heightened awareness. Incorporating sound, a film set, video footage and archival documents, the exhibition is unnervingly contemporary. It is a reminder of the continuing socioeconomic turmoil in the country and the constant dream of change, that much like these wastelands, sits hauntingly, perpetually in waiting. 

'A Riot in Three Acts' is on view at Somerset House Studios from September 27 - November 10, 2024.