I arrive on Woodgrange Road mid-afternoon on a Sunday, the winter sun bright and low in the sky. Propelled by a cold wind, I set off past a row of shops where Hyderabadi restaurants and trendy delis, phone shops and vape shops, jostle alongside one another. This is Forest Gate as I have always known it – multicultural and varied, with a distinct sense of everyone muddling along together.
I lived in this place between the ages of two and 19. On the road just ahead of me, the brown-bricked buildings of the Methodist church complex that have, in my memory, always been there, are now obscured by large panels, covered in graffiti. Since 2018, the old church has been scheduled for demolition to make way for a development of flats and a new church. Perching high on one of the buildings behind the hoardings at the end of the block is what I’ve come to see – The Preacher.
He is a roughly-hewn man, long and sinewy, a book held aloft in one hand, the other with its index finger pointing. He appears to be leaping out from the wall of the high-gabled church building. His clothes triangulate around his knees as though he might be wearing a dress. Unveiled in 1961, The Preacher is a sculpture depicting the founder of the Methodist faith, John Wesley, in mid-sermon.
I passed this artwork almost every day for years, first as my Mum pushed me in a buggy to nursery and later as I walked to secondary school. At weekends, I would see it when we went shopping. As a child, I remember finding it quite scary, an unusual intervention in this otherwise quite ordinary high street.
Then, I moved away and forgot about it completely until recently when, by chance, I met the granddaughter of the man who made it. Jean was a fellow student on my MA Creative Writing course. In a workshop, she shared some words about her grandfather, Peter Laszlo Peri, an artist of some note. I came to realise that he was the creator of The Preacher.
Through Jean and a cousin of hers, Peter Peri, also an artist and the keeper of his grandfather’s archive, to whom she introduced me, I learned about Peter Laszlo Peri’s life and work. He was born into a Hungarian-Jewish family in Budapest in 1899. A committed and politically active communist, he was later based in Berlin but left Nazi Germany and settled in London – a city he came to love, particularly Soho, according to his grandson. His work often reflected themes of working-class life he came across in London, such as men in the pub or boys playing football.
Up until his death in 1967, he created a number of public artworks in London including some commissioned by the London County Council. One can still be seen on Wareham House on the South Lambeth Estate in Vauxhall (below). I learned that The Preacher, like many of his works, was made of a material he had invented and named Pericrete – a blend of concrete, metallic powders and polyester resin. It was hardwearing enough for the outdoors and is surely the reason why the statue of Wesley looks exactly the same as it did when I was a child.
The development the Methodists have planned for the block is currently stalled, leaving a bleak spot in the middle of the main shopping street for the neighbourhood. Although new flats have sprung up on every other corner, this particular scheme has reached an impasse – the current planning permission has expired and doesn’t appear to have been renewed. Though the statue is Grade 2 listed and there were plans to move it to a new location, no-one, including Laszlo Peri’s family, seems to know what will happen to it now.
The Preacher has been a mainstay in my life. I couldn’t imagine walking down Woodgrange Road without seeing it. The questions around its fate got me thinking more broadly about what happens to art created for the public as London develops and buildings are knocked down and replaced.
Alongside many of the great artists of the day, Peter Laszlo Peri created work for the 1951 Festival of Britain, held on the Southbank. What happened to the various works shown, which were commissioned with public funding, was the subject of an investigation by Historic England a few years ago.
Another, by BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in 2011, revealed that the Skylon, the futuristic tower that became the icon of the festival, was dismantled and met an undignified end in a scrapyard in Canning Town. Barbara Hepworth’s Contrapuntal Forms found a home in the New Town of Harlow in Essex, where it remains. Laszlo Peri’s contribution, Sunbathing Group (below, later renamed The Sunbathers), was discovered in a state of disrepair in the garden of a hotel in Blackheath. It has since been restored and is now installed in Waterloo station.
A friend from a family in the business tells me it’s not unusual for public sculptures to end up in auction houses. The degradation that inevitably happens over time means the cost of upkeep and repair makes them unappealing to many galleries and private collectors.
It’s clear that public artworks meet different fates and much of this is down to chance. In 1996, as Stratford started to be regenerated in the build-up to the millennium, I remember a large new piece being installed at Stratford station, a mile or so from Forest Gate. Malcolm Robertson’s Time Spiral now lives outside Maryland station, having been safely moved when the Westfield shopping centre was built a few years later.
I’ve thought in particular about those recent public artworks that have divided opinion. Might Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit on the Olympic Park one day end up as scrap metal, like the Skylon? What of Paul Day’s depiction of an embracing couple that towers over the platform at St Pancras Station? Might The Meeting Place meet its end in a hotel garden in South London? What will happen to the celebrated Banksy in my local neighbourhood, Walthamstow? Might the chip shop’s next owner be tempted to take a roller to it while sprucing up the place?
If he did, would it really matter? I think it would. My life alongside The Preacher has convinced me that art is an integral part of how we experience places, whether we actively like the artwork or not. I hope The Preacher finds a new, safe home. As for Woodgrange Road, we can only hope that for the residents of Forest Gate, the sticking points about the development will be resolved and this entire block of high street, currently out of action, is returned to use.
Elin Morgan is a writer and communications professional from East London. Follow her on Bluesky. All photos © The Estate of Peter Laszlo Peri. All rights reserved. DACS. Reproduced with permission and thanks.
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