So, after all the planning, yesterday we started work on the hoarding, under a very very hot sun.
Whilst Ben and Jon from South London Gallery primed the wall with two coats of white paint, before painting sections of the wall different colours, I started to map out how the text would go on the hoarding.
Initially I had thought the writing would form a single line along the length of the wall, making it easily read by passers-by, with each phrase being marked by a different colour, but trying this out, the text looked lost on the wall, a thin rather straggly line, so I decided to chose the format used in my colour notes; writing three lines of text on each coloured panel on the wall. This was much better.
Working right by a set of traffic lights, on a main road in South London, bang opposite a pub, our activities attracted a lot of attention and curiosity. One young man asked if it was a ‘free wall’ obviously itching to add his own stuff to the wall, he seemed really disappointed when I said it was not. More people stopped to ask what was happening, as the coloured areas began to be painted.
I received a text from a friend on a bus, saying she thought she had seen me painting a wall, was it me ? Children and play workers from the Charlie Chaplin playground walked past on their way home.
Towards the end of the day there was time to only paint one word of the first phrase on the first section of the hoarding – Move Like A Ninja. It felt appropriate, there is a huge amount of work to do, I’ll have to Paint Like A Ninja to get it all done.
Ben And Jon From The South London Gallery Priming The Wall
