ABOUT

For the second year running I was selected to show Brixton off in the London Design Festival. As part of the Brixton Design Trail the last frame of this animation was up on Ferndale Road, Brixton, on the side of the old Bon Marche department store. The Street Gallery, curated by the talented team at top architecture firm Squire and Partners , was made up of a hand picked group of artists and designers from the area.

This piece has been sympathetically named by restructuring the words “Ferndale Road”, letter for letter, and relates to beautification in the tribal sense; the primal urge to impress by decorating the human form. The work and its corresponding animation evokes thoughts of evolution, regeneration and transformation chaotically mixed with the thoughts of rebellion at total human displacement. Created from layers of studies made from touring the bowels of the building, photos of local loved ones, primary source vintage material from the Bon Marche past, and details from the artists own personal collection of antiquarian literature. Of note in frames of the work are details relating to the fact that creative legend, David Bowie was born 500 meters up the road from this spot, and that Charlie Chaplin lived on this road in 1901.

Brixton Design Trail was featured in local press as well as the Evening Standard, Design Curial, World of Interiors and had its own slot on London Live TV news. It was listed as a London Design Festival highlight in numerous articles from the Guardian, Londonist, Time Out, High Snobiety and Confessions of a Design Geek.