Knitting The Air

Life viewed from London E3 Knitting The Air (4-20 September 2026) Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ The latest exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery is a striking display of data, visualising something you can't see but might kill you. It's a calendar of knitted squares representing a year of air quality in east London, hardly the Bayeux Tapestry but an important historical record all the same. It covers three walls of the gallery, almost like it was designed to be exhibited here, and was knitted by a team of 132 volunteers over a two year period. It's amazing what you can get a community group to do if you inspire them. The top two rows represent data taken from a sensor by the A12 in Poplar and the bottom two data from a nearby street outside Culloden Primary School. The pinks are the PM2.5 count while the blues underneath represent nitrogen dioxide. In each case there are three shades, the lightest for 'below WHO guidelines', the darkest for 'over UK legal target' and the medium…