The HIV Memorial Tree
A living memorial outside Barcode
Around 2015, outside the club Barcode on Albert Embankment, Kate Hoey – Member of Parliament for Vauxhall from 1989 to 2019 – planted a tree in memory of those lost to HIV and AIDS. In a neighbourhood that was, for two decades, the beating heart of London’s gay nightlife, it was a quiet, living memorial to the epidemic that took so many of the people who built the scene around it.
These arches have since been swept up in the redevelopment that has reshaped the Vauxhall riverside, so whether the tree still stands is an open question – look for it as you pass. Either way, it was planted here: a small green marker of grief and remembrance among the concrete.