GIFTS RETURNED BY THE RIVER

Description

One of them left the address of the find, gifted by the river, as a neat conclusion. Or provocation for a further chapter.—Iain Sinclair

Gifts Returned by the River (Swedenborg House Press, 2025) marks the latest collaboration between the acclaimed writer Iain Sinclair and Swedenborg House, and a new phase of extrapolation from the materials shored up by Albion Island Vortex, an exhibition staged fifty-two years ago at the Whitechapel Gallery. Akin to recuperating drowned Doves Press type from the Thames, Gifts Returned by the River creates acts of reconstitution and imagination using the case of memory. Collating responses to Iain Sinclair’s exhibition Histories & Hauntings (Swedenborg House Gallery, 2023)—itself a restaging and reworking of Albion Island Vortex—this ambitious publication incorporates multiform contributions from:

Alice Albinia, Renchi Bicknell, Javier Calvo, Brian Catling, Gareth Evans, Allen Fisher, Jürgen Ghebrezgiabiher, Jarett Kobek, Stephen McNeilly, Michael Moorcock, Louis Petit, Victor Rees, Anya Reeve, John Rogers, Adolfo Barberá del Rosal, Matthew Shaw, Iain Sinclair, Ben Wickey and Carol Williams.

A limited first edition of 200 presented in a tracing paper wrap, with two “gifts” enclosed inside. There is also the option to purchase a special edition of 26, signed and with extra material. A forthcoming standard edition is to be announced.

IAIN SINCLAIR is considered one of London’s greatest chroniclers. Iain’s early work consisted mostly of poetry which he published on his own small press, Albion Village Press. His novels include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Prize and the Encore Prize) and Dining on Stones (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize). Non-fiction books, exploring the myth and matter of London, include Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital and Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project. For the Swedenborg Society he has written Blake’s London: The Topographic Sublime (2011); with Brian Catling, Several Clouds Colliding (2012); and Swimming to Heaven: The Lost Rivers of London (2013). He was also a contributor to Swedenborg’s Lusthus (2024). He has curated two exhibitions at Swedenborg House, Histories & Hauntings (2023) and Pariah Genius: The Psychobiography of a Photographer (2024).