Gerry’s Pompeii

Gerry’s Pompeii is a collection of sculptural artworks – a ‘visionary art environment’ – created by a retired Irish postal worker, Gerry Dalton, over his last decades, up until his death in 2019. With little or no knowledge of the art world, using materials salvaged or recycled, working in secret and often at night, Gerry transformed his social housing flat, garden and his neighbours’ canal path with over 100 concrete sculptures of miniature palaces, stately homes, cathedrals and figurines. The figures were mostly historical, from 5th century Irish warrior Queen Maeve to King Charles II, Oliver Cromwell and Buddha. The outside canal path sculptures, around 2 foot high, were set against a glittering wall embellished with glass and mosaic. Before he died he confided in a neighbour, “They’ll be astonished by what they’ll find in my garden in years to come. It’ll be like Pompeii or something – Gerry’s Pompeii.”

The full extent of his work was only uncovered after his death in 2019. Curator Sasha Galitzine led a fundraising campaign endorsed by national organisations to buy Gerry’s flat from Genesis Notting Hill Housing Association, in order to create and conserve the first museum of social housing in the UK. Having raised 300k in pledged funding, the pandemic halted the campaign and Gerry’s home was transferred back to the housing association. The artwork inside and in his back garden was removed at some point in 2020 by Gerry’s (distant) relatives. The 50-metre long sculpture garden on the bank of the Grand Union canal remains: 53 cement sculptures, all painted in black, grey, white and red, plus inscriptions. Most of the sculptures are cast in solid cement but some are precast in plastic and partially filled with cement. All were pre-made and then modified by the artist. He added more cement to create new shapes, clothing, hair and faces, and decorated them with jewellery and other objects.

The sculptures are only accessible via the neighbours’ garden, or by boat from the canal.
“[Gerry’s] experiences as a working-class Irishman in London are vital to understanding the seemingly random selection of references and materials contained within Gerry's Pompeii. Figureheads of Irish nationalism, from Sir Neill O'Neill to Daniel O'Connell, sit alongside the people and places that signify British imperial authority; as well as a plethora of classical heroes and mythological figures from various traditions. This tension between two competing
national identities is one experienced by many Irish migrants to England, between the 'push' of their Irish cultural origins, and the 'pull' of assimilation and a feeling of belonging.” - Danielle Thom, Former Curator of Making at the Museum of London, now curator at the Design Museum.

“This is a pristine, post-industrial and precarious contemporary survival of a vital, Anglo-Irish vernacular landscape style; a style that reaches back perhaps 250 years, a style generally unrecognised yet immediately familiar in its painted stucco, unsettling mnemonic figurines, and waterside gardening…” – Professor Dan Hicks, Curator at the Pitt
Rivers Museum, Oxford

The project will include conservation work on the sculptures and the most deteriorated decorative wall elements, including inscriptions that are essential to the interpretation and understanding of the sculptures. Work will include repair, refilling and repainting