The hoarding – in Kennington, South London – is opposite the Charlie Chaplin Adventure Playground where I was placed during 2009 by the South London Gallery, as artist in residence. Work with the children again, I will be writing texts on the 100 metre long hoarding – based on asking the children what things could passersby do / think as they walk by?
Painting the hoarding continues to attract attention and comments from passers-by.
Most people want to know what is going on.
Some think that local businesses have paid for advertising space on the hoarding and that I am writing up slogans, which is an interesting idea.
I always stress the project is a collaboration with the children and play workers at the Charlie Chaplin Adventure Playground. Most people know of the playground, though not all, as some people only work in the area.
One man stopped his bike to tell me he was appalled with TELL A LIE, saying this was a terrible thing for children to read.
A young woman said she liked the work, and asked me to put an apostrophe between the N and T in dont. I could be wrong but I think she was a primary school teacher.
Another man said that the flats being built were luxury flats, and that the Charlie Chaplin playground was going to be knocked down, (this is not true) he simply would not accept that this was not true, and our conversation did not progress, I think he was going to question my ethics believing I was making work for a private housing company, rather than one providing affordable social housing.
Generally the comments have been very supportive of the project, several people have said they have seen the work develop over the past week from travelling past on the bus. One man, when I said the hoarding would be painted over in September – when the NOTHING IS FOREVER exhibition is over at South London Gallery – said he was going to email the local council and the construction company asking them not to cover the writing up, but to let it stand until the building work was completed.
There are still abusive comments shouted out by passing cars, but equally positive comments shouted out too.
My favourite so far, is a small girl who as she walked past called out Mr Painter Man.
Working on such a main road is a noisy experience. Ambulances and police cars constantly rush by. Yesterday a car was stopped by the police yards away from where Lee and I were working. A woman, and a half dressed man got out of the car, a baby’s carry-cot was laid on the pavement. A large white van arrived with half a dozen police, and eventually the man was taken away. One of the policeman came to see what I was doing and he told me that the car was stopped because it showed up as stolen. The man was a known drug dealer. When the carry-cot was searched drugs were found, hidden under the baby.
Two trees were cut down on the building site. We had to move along from the area of the hoarding we were working on – so as to be safe.
A police patrol car stopped today and asked me what I was doing – I had been picked up on the CCTV cameras along the road. I told them, and still rather unconvinced the two policemen went across to the Adventure Playground to check my story out.
A day of heavy rain showers, at one point washing away the letters I had wrote.
Despite the continual threat of rain I got up a fair head of steam painting all the text in the photograph by working though to the early evening.
Again, some pleasant interactions with passers-by, a young child addressed me as Mr Painter Man, and some ‘thumbs up’ as people walked by, and some pretty unsavoury comments called out from passing cars.
Rain is forecasted for the next couple of days.
Friday was the second day of painting the text, another fiercely hot day. Jon and Stuart from the gallery continue to paint the coloured sections of the hoarding.
I am being assisted by Lee Gentry, a recent graduate from Camberwell School of Arts, where he studied photography. Apart from supplying me with clean water and paint, Lee is documenting the project, and is there also as a ‘presence’, answering questions from passers-by.
The painting initially goes well, and I begin to imagine that I will complete the first panel that day – but this does not happen – there are the inevitable breaks for cold drinks, drafting out the second line of text, viewing the work from the opposite side of the road, and I am now beginning to wonder if all the text can be painted by the deadline.
I need to start working earlier in the day, and continue into the evening to stand any reasonable chance, this means having paint and water with me, rather than relying on the playground to be open to access these, also to work over the couple of weekends I have remaining before the deadline.
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
Two stories that demonstrate the freewheeling nature of a child’s imagination . . .
Working with the children a week ago to devise texts for the hoarding, I met a boy I had not met before.
I gave him some paper and pens and he returned with a full page of writing – his story – which was impossible to read or make sense of. So I asked him to read it to me, his finger pointing to each word he had written – a story about trains.
He held on to the paper and during the day read his story to different play workers.
It turned out that each time he did so, the story was a new one, each completely different. As he pointed to each word, a new scenario was being created.
When I told Frances at South London Gallery about this, she told me of the girl who had written and illustrated a story on large sheets of paper pinned to a long fence. Frances had congratulated the girl on her story, and the girl, like the boy, told Frances her story, or rather a new story to the one she had told me, this too changing to a completely different one.
