A distant mirror
Hackney, E8
Murals are unfashionable, and peace murals commissioned by loony-left councillors at the height of their self-indulgent assault on the Thatcher government are perhaps most unfashionable of all. Yet the Hackney Peace Carnival Mural in London, created between 1983 and 1985 and now threatened with demolition, really ought to be saved. It is a fascinating work, a grand exercise in figurative painting which lifts your heart, or at least provokes your curiosity, as you see it adorning the entire side of a house in Dalston Lane, a few yards east of Balls Pond Road.