The painting is now complete, and the show continues. Open to public scrutiny from Friday October 9th, every Friday, Saturday & Sunday for four weeks ending the 25th October.
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I found some photographs of the exact area on Google Earth, with their timeline feature going back to 1999. The outlines of the walls of the old buildings under the westway are clearly visible, these being the dark grey lines within my piece. If you have Google Earth, the location can be found by clicking the image below:
one-foot-in-the-grove-location on Google Earth
I chose to pay respects to the space by working within these lines of old. On the final night of painting, there was news of ‘the helicopter’ arriving, and that it was to get parked up in the same arena as my painting. This meant moving Ruby Baby, and guiding the reversing truck carrying the helicopter, from Portobello Road. At one point, just before the trailer broke, it felt like the whole 2 ton of chopper was resting on my shoulders, as the sheer weight took a wheel out…
I was originally going to use a visor with red/blue gels to create a stereoscopic piece, but visors are hard to come by, especially one that would withstand the location. There was news of a stereoscopic microscope, diving helemets and the chance that a welding mask could have ben used. An executive decision was made at this early stage to forget the 3D glasses and calculate how to combat the viewers necks hurting.
From science lessons I learnt that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, so I created a mirror with stand on the existing rail, right underneath the viewpoint of my ceiling, set at such an angle that the oncoming visitor sees a reflection of the first part of the ceiling, as they approach the mirror more of the mural appears under (over) your head (feet). Pete (lighting) and The Fixer (Lindsay) came to the rescue with not only a mirror, but a cut scaff pole and some no (more) nails.
If you pop down to the show, you can get your hands on a limited-run postcard that I made especially for the show, featuring one of my M C Escher tributes, Retail Activity – PLUS an A3 version of my new ‘Smoking Fine’ sticker
