Joining Invisible Dots

As part of our Your Space Or Mine project, we’ve been collaborating with walking and performance artist Alisa Oleva in London, where she has hosted a series of urban art walks over the past year. We’re now travelling up north to Manchester to host two new walks that are unique and site-specific, created for its streets, rhythms, and stories.

Alisa says: “Bringing walks to new cities allows us to explore how differently each city is wired and what its streets can tell us if we walk them together — noticing, playing, asking, and listening. In Manchester, I will spend time creating an art walk that I will lead, as well as working together with a local artist to lead a walk of their own, sharing two perspectives — that of a local and that of a visitor.”

In Manchester, Alisa has invited walking artist-activist-academic Morag Rose as a guest artist to create the second walk. Both walks invite us to see the city from different angles, connecting invisible dots. You are invited to join either walk, or both.

Open to all, these walks are for anyone curious to explore walking and the city in a playful, critical, thoughtful and poetic way. There is no need to bring anything, but try to travel light and dress accordingly as it will proceed in all weather conditions. 

Both events are free to attend. However, spaces are limited, so RSVP to secure your place.

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His art is as colourful as his camera roll. Having grown up in Cambridge but long since made Bristol his home, Gresham hasn’t so much carved out a career as an artist as he’s painted one — one vibrant shape, mural or installation at a time. Since picking up a spray can as a teenager, his work has pulsed with colour, movement and that unmistakable graphic rhythm rooted in skate culture and 80s-90s design. He’s been making art professionally for over a decade now, and his designs have only grown brighter while, in his eyes, the one around him has dimmed.

His latest collaboration with BUILDHOLLYWOOD, an enormous takeover at Bristol’s Lakota site, responds directly to a study that found the world is, quite literally, losing its colour. Researchers analysing thousands of consumer products from 1800 to the present day discovered a steady slide toward greys, blacks and whites. A global drift toward monochrome.

“You don’t really notice it happening” he says. “When we were younger, everyone had Burberry phone cases on their 3310s — now we’ve all just got black iPhones. No one wears brightly coloured socks anymore. It’s all white or black. You can feel it’s lacking.”

Gresham’s response isn’t political, nor ironic. It’s instinctive — a reminder of how colour makes us feel. “You made me question my whole life,” he laughs, when asked why the world needs more colour. “For me, it releases endorphins. If I walk past something and think, ‘Oh, that’s a nice colour,’ that gives me a buzz. It makes me feel good. It’s good for the soul.”

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Max King has a knack for showing familiar objects and structures in a new light, and often in completely different proportions. Working in sculpture and installations, he toys with scale and perspective to create new encounters for his audiences, whether by collapsing buildings and other architectural structures into miniature models, or by blowing up small, everyday items such as pin badges into large-scale pieces that people can walk around. To him, presenting typical places and objects in atypical ways can be both magical and thought-provoking at the same time.

Born in Norfolk, now based in London, King studied graphic communication design at Central Saint Martins before doing an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Different as they may seem, both courses left a profound imprint on his practice. His design education has no doubt been useful when it comes to the planning and construction of his sculptures. More importantly, it has meant that he keeps the functionality and experience of his pieces front of mind, always considering how people will interact with them. “I think a lot about the audience and how the audience will explore the objects, and I think that comes from my design background and always thinking about the user experience,” he says. “I know lots of people, especially artists, who don’t do that. But I always think about how someone seeing the work is going to move around it and how they are going to experience it, which is key.”

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That instinct to document, to preserve, to show the value in the communities she knows best, is where her practice begins. It’s why she talks about “building sideways, not upwards.” It’s why she brings her friends and neighbours onto runways or reconstructs her grandmother’s living room at Fashion Week. Sheffield, and the community it represents, isn’t just her background, it’s her compass.

Her Yemeni heritage sharpened that perspective from the start. She grew up surrounded by its traditions, from the generosity and selflessness that ran through everyday life, to the visual richness of her family home. One room might be a traditional Yemeni space with patterned rugs, heavy curtains, and gold-framed mirrors. Next to it, the “British living room” as she jokingly calls it, with sofas facing the TV. At family gatherings, her aunties in abayas and hijabs would sit alongside cousins in Nike tracksuits. Breakfast might mean a full English, but always with Yemeni chai tea.

At the same time, youth clubs gave her values somewhere to grow. Spaces similar to Reach Up, where Kazna now volunteers, founded by Safiya Saeed (now Lord Mayor of Sheffield), became second homes for her and her siblings. Her parents were young when they had them, and youth clubs offered another safe, collective environment. Kazna says they instilled the importance of community from the beginning, lessons that have stayed with her even as most of those spaces have since disappeared from Sheffield.

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Monthly wanderings through a complex array of urban environments in the vicinity of Hoxton and Spitalfields might be enriching enough but Alisa adds a further dimension by introducing prompts, themes and situations that reattuned participants’ experience of walking in the city.

Here’s a sample: ‘As you walk, try to step on as many different surfaces as you can find.’

‘On your walk, write down every word or phrase you notice around you. When you finish the walk, read all you have written out loud back in the streets.’ ‘Choose something in the far distance. Walk towards it until you reach it.’ ‘Walk as slowly as you can.’…

These and many more ostensibly simple instructions invite walkers to better notice, feel, remember, touch, smell, hear and otherwise experience unexpected nuances of moving through urban space and place.

For the climactic event the exterior panels at The Carwash were adorned with the 12 posters, a different colour way for each month, that advertised the project throughout the previous year.

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Sally Gilford’s bold and inquisitive works explore the intersection of STEM thinking in digital and analogue realms. Drawing from over a decade of collaboration with scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research at the University of Manchester, Gilford continues her exploration of the invisible worlds that underpin our daily lives. From architectural artefacts, bio images to historical archives and beyond, she tells stories that nod to the past, present and future, subverting traditional ideals into dynamic provocations.

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The photographer known as Suede is running through the list of individuals she’s celebrating in her forthcoming billboard series. Amongst the fifteen portraits will be plastered across London, there’s stylist Valeria Chrampani; painter and actor Adébayo Bolaji, chef Abby Lee who runs Mambow in Clapton and UKG original, MC Bushkin of Heartless Crew. She is, she says, engaged in cultural documentation, catching cultural moments as they happen. Visually, it’s a super-charged, high-octane treat. ‘I’m chasing energy over perfection,’ she explains. ‘My approach is always the same: very real and never over-produced.’

Suede – real name Kay Holden – is using the spotlight offered by artist celebration programme Your Space Or Mine to celebrate others. But this is her experience: of being supported on the way up and then extending a hand back down to new artists as they’re coming through. The BUILDHOLLYWOOD  x Suede collaboration ‘Everyday People’ speaks to the same dynamics: a portrait series exploring the individuals and communities that express London culture, and shape it, too.

Growing up in Frome, a town in Somerset, Suede fell in love with US sports culture with a strong side-order of music and fashion. After moving to Cardiff for university, where she coached the basketball team, she emigrated to Australia and then the USA. ‘I’ve been in a million different scenes from surf punk in Sydney to the queer scene in New York,’ she says. ‘I’m a melting pot of inspiration’. Gradually, friends began asking her to shoot their music videos or to help with styling and creative direction.

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In this new work, set on a central stone plinth – which will also be flanked by three large-scale billboards for the launch – Fishel overturns what we might expect of public sculpture. Given the toppling of the infamous Colston Statue during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Bristol is sensitive to what gets placed on its public plinths. So often the history of sculpture in public places has tended toward the overblown, commemorating public figures – monarchs, emperors, military leaders, slave traders – deemed worthy of monumentalising. Fishel cuts through all that. Rather than a recognisable figure, aloof and standing over us, she elevates one part of an unspecified body: a single limb. Titled Praise You 2.0 (2025) her leg is an assemblage constructed from sheet metal, coloured in vibrant royal blue and lime green, with its joints and internal framework exposed, giving it an unapologetically DIY feel. Praise You 2.0 pays tribute to strength, vulnerability and fun, qualities that Fishel argues should sit side by side, rather than in opposition, in a functional society.

Here Fishel talks to Lizzie Lloyd about the unsung value of domestic workers in the NHS. She touches on the power of art to share common human experiences, the urgency of fighting political injustices, and the everyday individual actions that make all our lives a little better.

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Over the past 12 months we have brought people together to explore walking the city in a playful, critical, thoughtful and poetic way. These walks have offered alternative techniques to look and engage with the streets around us, covering themes such as following to mapping, angles to distances, listening and touching. Each walk has given participants the chance to take part in an act of collective close looking and reimagining – opening up spaces we don’t usually notice to make visible different ways of thinking about the city and being in it.

The Gathering was an opportunity for past participants and for those who were curious to come together to celebrate over walking, sharing food, map making and conversations. The BUILDHOLLYWOOD CarWash has been the starting and finishing point of each event, so it was a no brainer to host the final Gathering at this space once again.

WALK: our series of free monthly urban art walks, hosted by performance and walking artist Alisa Oleva is part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine project.

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The heat is rising, the clock is ticking, the feed is reloading. Our devices are an extension of our limbs now – benign digital growths, still attached by lithe, fleshy tendrils to our febrile, stubby digits. We are tethered to them, pacified by them, and beguiled by them. And yet, despite our tacit sinking into their enchanting 4G catchment, there remains hope: that these screens are also on our side – informing us, educating us, and offering access and agency to challenge more potent powers. This is the paradox that Jazz Grant’s new work confronts – a visceral, multi-part billboard series exploring what it means to witness a world in collapse, and still find a way to respond.

Known for her emotionally charged collage and stop-motion animation, Jazz Grant’s practice is grounded in instinct, texture, and storytelling. Her current billboard takeover spans London and unfolds in four acts, from eyes burning with fire to silhouettes locked in protest, it captures a narrative arc of grief, rage, and ultimately, resistance. “I was really aware of how much I’ve been observing the burning world, both metaphorically and literally burning on my phone,” she says. “Then I made the connection that the billboards themselves almost look like a phone screen”.

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The Glasgow-born artist, Trackie McLeod, is talking about the white-walled galleries, the institutions and the funding bodies that claim to champion diversity, but can more often come across as being tokenistic.

Proudly Scottish, Queer and working class, his work dances on the intersection of all of the above, taking the shape of sculptures, print, sound and more. From Burberry-clad Micras to copper-clad tabloid homophobia, his work merges sarcasm with sincerity to challenge who gets represented and who gets the piss taken out of them.

Fruit II marks his third solo show, this time taking place at The Bomb Factory’s Holborn Gallery in London (May 22 – June 11, 2025). Rooted in early 2000s reference points and his own battles of masculine versus femme energy, it’s a personal and political act of archiving: of what was repressed, what was performed, and what’s finally being reclaimed.

“It’s about growing up queer in Glasgow, and the kind of shame that came with that,” he says. “The performances, the silence, the things you did to fit in. I’ve tried to capture those unspoken rites of passage, the uniforms, the rituals, but also to take the piss out of them, because that’s how I process it. I want people to feel the heaviness if they need to, but also to laugh and to see themselves in it.”

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It’s a hard time for all forms of collective, communal celebration, whether that’s physical venues struggling with rising costs, issues with property developers and noise-averse neighbours or almost everyone dealing with the spiralling cost of basics. However, good times will be had, and festivals provide an annual celebration, whether that’s something free and local, or big ticket moments like Glastonbury where audiences and artists alike can switch off and tune into their favourite forms of music and culture.

“Festivals and club culture, they provide a common ground for people,” says photographer Rob Jones, who has been creating iconic images of the dancefloor since 2015. “Everyone’s there for the same reason: the music and the emotion that comes with it. It’s so positive.”

During the pandemic, the photographer and co-founder of Khroma Collective with Jake Davis, photographed over 40 of London’s most iconic nightclubs and venues whilst they were closed. Shot at night, the images provide a time capsule both of a shared moment when going out wasn’t possible and of music venues in the capital city at that time.

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“My story and legacy run as a theme through the work I produce,” Faisal shares, shedding light on an industrious, diasporic South Asian family history that leads to the last 65 years in the city of Birmingham. It’s a geography that sits tight in the nexus of Faisal’s work, both artistic and academic, cited as the city that hosted both prayer and rave for him in his early years. The rich cultural heritage of the West Midlands emerges in concurrent episodes of Faisal’s work to this day, from permanent collections exhibited at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, to, ‘It Might Be Nothing but It Could Be Something..‘, a commission in collaboration with a number of academics from the University of Birmingham and Eastside Projects.

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The last time we crossed paths IRL was at the social enterprise and charity – now sadly closed – House of Saint Barnabas in Soho. Titchner’s show there – titled PAINTINGS WITH WORDS AND PAINTINGS WITH WORDS AND NUMBERS – was an exhibition of exquisite economy. At another extreme, and just to begin to demonstrate the breadth of the artist’s production, Titchner was invited to make work for an ambitious and conscience raising partnership between Hauser & Wirth and mental health changemaking charity Hospital Rooms. LIKE THERE IS HOPE AND I CAN DREAM OF ANOTHER WORLD is a 15m long, almost 6m high mural hand painted on fifty-one plywood panels that has been shown in different venues but is destined to be permanently installed at The River Centre, a new NHS mental health hospital in Norwich. This is an artist whose creative output continually surprises, challenges and with this latest poster work conceivably nurtures passersby. Having collaborated with Mark back in 2020 to display PLEASE BELIEVE THESES DAYS WILL PASS during the pandemic, it’s a pleasure and privilege for BUILDHOLLYWOOD to share Titchner’s work once again, featuring IT’S THE HOPE THAT KEEPS US HERE throughout the UK.

An overarching subject would seem to be addressing and reflecting on the human condition. The range and depth of his work seems to offer up a kind of test laboratory, both proposing and wondering how we communicate, receive and deal with different facets of life’s complexity. In short, it’s a mission to investigate how we think, feel, behave and care for one another. The artist kindly agreed to answer a few questions to explore his creative process in a bit more depth.

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The most striking and recognisable element of Sgàire’s work is her signature doll-eye make-up: a hyperreal, hyper-feminine anime-esque look that speaks to the origin of glamour as a form of magical trickery. Equally alluring and disquieting, Sgàire transforms the make-up routine from a process of enhancement to an optical illusion in an accentuated take on the (specifically trans and queer) creation of identity. In 2020, she revealed the secrets behind her look via a make-up tutorial video for Vogue. In many ways the video could be considered her ultimate artwork, and the epitome of camp magnificence; a perfectly balanced critique/celebration of image-making on arguably its most storied platform.

Sgàire’s work is often situated in nightlife spaces, and there’s something of the ‘80s club kid in the way she melds avant-garde and pop references in these environments – much like her friends and frequent collaborators PONYBOY. She’s performed at clubs, Pride events and gallery parties throughout Europe, and she co-founded the much-missed Glasgow queer club Bonjour, where she hosted the legendary karaoke night Sgàiraoke. She has continued to develop this karaoke/performance art hybrid in venues around Scotland, including at Edinburgh Art Festival and Jupiter Artland’s annual queer party JUPITER RISING – this year she hosted dressed in an XXXXXL heavy metal longsleeve t-shirt, the arms dragging behind her like a bizarre bridal veil.

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Framed by a stack of paintings to his left and a series of photos hung on the wall behind him, Will Butterick is the very picture of an artist. Sharing his tales of early enchantment with Louise Bourgeois’ Spider sculpture sat squarely outside the Tate Modern, Will’s love for art started young, developing into a profound and tender appreciation for immersive experiments in the glossy green pastures of digital art. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to correct the perfect sort of red to look like the shade of an apple,” says Will, and whilst his technical proficiency is not one to be criticised, his ventures into “moving paintings” takes the stasis out of physical mediums, expanding the breadth, depth, and reach of his work into something really quite remarkable. “People use terms like ‘movement’ and ‘gesture’ to describe paintings”, Will shares, “but actually, as much as you want to create that feeling, it’s still ‘still’ on the wall.”

From those still white walls of a gallery to the bustling canvas of a BUILDHOLLYWOOD billboard, Will’s work is set to be showcased across the city of Brighton this month, the sunny seaside town he has called home for the past seven years. Having worked with billboards through an alternate lens of professionally photographing advertising, this series subverts his camera’s usual gaze, instead capturing his understanding of what happens in, beyond, and between billboards. When asked about the nature of his own series, Will responds artfully, “they’re a response to the sorts of images I have of empty billboards, or of billboards filled with the remnants of the stuff before that has been left”, a nod to his interest in “void places”, and the subtle bleakness found in something noiselessly ripped down, only to be replaced with paste (and haste) in that self same place.

Will’s work remains steadfast in the face of a rapid creative turnover, a dependable digital footprint that keeps a steady pace amidst the furor found in the colourful pits of the UK’s contemporary art scene. His experimentations feel reasoned, and explorations tempered by a mature understanding of what digital art, photography, and collage can elicit in feeling and focus, within the context of our changing minds and roaming digits. These billboards set the stage for a wide reaching public gallery in the city, creating an accessible and open space for Will’s work to resonate with those equally intrigued by what can be found in the absence of something else, with the peachy promise of something new.

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Installation of Andre Williams’ LET IT BE ME sees the permanent plinth temporarily coloured a bold carmine shade. Affixed to one side of this cuboid pedestal is a low relief portrait of the artist. This boldly rendered face painted on 3mm aluminium is truncated at the base, so it looks like it’s peeking out from the ground. The artist is wearing chunky glasses and sporting a cerulean cap, one that’s a little bit too small for the wearer by the looks of it. Electric purple strips of aluminium striate the red ground atop the plinth and topple briefly over one side, forming an odd sort of fringe above the portrait.   

The artwork’s titular text elements sprout somewhat precariously from the bulky base. Again, formed from a layered mix of 5mm and 3mm laser cut aluminium, the four hand–painted words LET IT BE ME each have their own separate panels. Vibrantly contrasting coloured grounds and painted shadowed lettering lend the work an exaggerated cartoon-like trompe l’oeil effect. These are open, conversational words on the street, addressing the public with a quirky informality. Instead of being informational or didactic, Williams’ four words prompt a smiling curiosity. Why should it be you? What are you going to do if it is you? Why can’t it be me? Williams’ unpretentious folk aesthetic draws in, intrigues rather than confronts passersby. 

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Every so often a newer designer appears on the scene that garners a lot of attention, but sometimes the excitement is hard to sustain for a brand starting out. A few years ago designer Karoline Vitto presented her graduate collection and proved to be a name that would be glued to the lips of London’s fashion community for a long time. Four years since her brand was first launched, she is still a pioneering talent and setting a new standard for her generation. When we speak, she is kind, patient and has the sort of assertive energy you could expect from someone running a successful, tight ship.

Born in Brazil and currently based in London, Vitto’s journey into fashion was not typical of those around her in the Brazilian countryside town of Caçador. Surrounded by a family immersed in the craft –  her grandfather a cobbler and her grandmothers adept at sewing – Vitto’s early exposure to the hands-on creation of garments sparked her fascination with the art of making. Her childhood in the 90s, during a time when Brazilian fashion was dominated by unattainable beauty standards epitomized by models like those on Victoria’s Secret runways, led her to question the narrow definitions of beauty and to eventually carve out her own path in the industry.

Moving to London in 2016 to study at Central Saint Martins, Vitto sought a more creative approach to fashion education, a stark contrast to the technical focus she experienced in Brazil. Her time in London not only shaped her design philosophy but also solidified her commitment to creating garments that celebrate every body type. Vitto’s work is characterized by its focus on inclusivity and her dedication to representing real women – sampling on a size 16 or larger, and extending her sizes up to 4XL. For Vitto, designing for a variety of body types was never an afterthought; it was a fundamental aspect of her brand’s identity from the very beginning.

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WATAWAT

WHERE ART THOU ART WHERE ART THOU
THE TRUE HERSTORY OF ART

EVENT DETAILS

BUILDHOLLYWOOD PRESENTS:

ARTIST ZOE BEDEAUX AKA T.I.P INVITES YOU TO
MEDITATE ON THIS SONIC TRANSMISSION.
A PILGRIMAGE TO THE HEART
AT THE CARWASH IN SHOREDITCH
OCT 10TH – 11TH

PART ONE

DRINKS 18.30

AUDIO POESIS – SOUND INSTALLATION:
NOTHING TO SEE HEAR – THE ULTARA VIOLET CATASTROPHE.
EXHIBIT A BARNUM’S GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1873)
ANDROMEDA THE AETHIOP 
‘THE INVISIBLE WOMAN.’
TRANSMITS HER STORY

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A top ten of Jeremy Deller posters might include the rave-era benevolence of ‘Bless This Acid House’, his Brexit-era ‘Welcome To The Shitshow’ (printed on a Union Jack), and a poster showing Stonehenge as if the monoliths were actually spelling out the word ‘vote’.

The 2024 General Election campaign sees two new Deller artworks hitting the streets, in collaboration with BUILDHOLLYWOOD. One states quite accurately ‘We Have Been Swimming In Shit’ with the other bearing the legend ‘14 Years Of Hurt’ (designed by Fraser Muggeridge). Posted up around the UK, they are he says, ‘self-explanatory’. ‘When you’re making a poster in the street you have to make it attention-grabbing, something easily and quickly legible, ’he says, adding that these two additions to the political poster archives are ‘insanely legible’.

The Euros influenced one of the posters. ‘Because the football’s on, I thought I’d wrestle it in. The design looks like the back of a football shirt, not that I’m a football fan. It’s obvious, maybe it’s too obvious, but everyone knows what it means, and what the 14 years refers to. It doesn’t need explaining’.

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Its distance covered grows for a few weeks every year or so, depending on whether or not a team bearing Three Lions upon chests is participating in the latest major football tournament. This summer, as Gareth Southgate leads another squad of players to another major finals at Euro 2024, you can safely predict an increase in expected flags – and not just because patriotism-slash-nationalism tends to get turned up a notch.

Sheffield-born artist Corbin Shaw has been using England flags as his canvas for a while now, and with the help of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine project and their billboards, his take on St George’s Cross will adorn city streets up and down the nation.

Its use is not about reclaiming the flag, but rather using it as a “Trojan Horse” to deliver messages about national identity and masculinity. “It’s quite abrasive,” he says, chatting to us during a trip to Marseilles – a city that felt the sharp end of this cross during the World Cup in 1998. “It’s got a lot of history in colonialism and right-wing nationalism and I wanted to use it, overt that and juxtapose it.”

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As part of our latest Your Space Or Mine project, we appointed performance and walking artist Alisa Oleva as Artist in Residence, commissioned to work from BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s creative space, The CarWash, in Shoreditch.

“Each month I will host a walk which will start at The CarWash venue and then venture into the surrounding neighbourhood. Every walk will have a different theme, exploring the everyday, sensorial ways of engaging with the city, sounds, textures, memories and histories, emotional map-making, and the politics of public space” – Alisa Oleva.

Where does the city take you? Where do you turn next? Who walks these streets? What’s the sound of your own footsteps? Who owns the city? What’s here, and what do we wish was still here? Where do you find yourself now? These are the questions that Alisa explored on her experimental urban walks.

Over the past 12 months, Alisa’s walks have offered an act of collective close looking and reimagining – opening up spaces we don’t usually notice to make visible different ways of being in, and thinking about, the city.

To celebrate the end of our WALK series, we hosted a final Gathering event on the 20th July, which was an opportunity for past participants and for those who are curious to come together to celebrate over walking, sharing food, map making and conversations. The BUILDHOLLYWOOD CarWash has been the starting and finishing point of each event and we were excited to host the final Gathering at this space once again. 

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Known as Bobby and Bobbie respectively, Bob Vylan are a duo renowned for their brazen lyrics and commitment to music with meaning, building an identity reminiscent of a genre yet created or credited for its hold on the ears of the masses. BUILDHOLLYWOOD spoke with guitarist and singer Bobby to learn more about the politics of being political, their 2022 MOBO Award win, and the magic of their upcoming album, Humble As The Sun.

Bob Vylan’s sound is uniquely compelling, aligning the rage of punk with the poetry of grime to generate music fuelled by both the weight of lived experience and the hook of driving guitar riffs. There’s a measure to their lyrics; an outpouring of discourse tempered by what can only be described as a pretty reasonable assessment of the political situation we find ourselves in. “It’s confrontational”, Bobby shares in our conversation, a word that captures the vim and vigour found in tracks like “I Heard You Want Your Country Back” and “England’s Ending”, and yet Bobby is anything but confrontational, instead, he’s an artist generous with his thoughts and musings; be it on fatherhood, the state of foreign policy, or the blissful warmth of the sun.

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With a bunch of yellow daffodils sat obliquely in the corner of the screen, Dagmar Bennett’s Welsh identity extends well beyond her gentle accent and clear pride in her ancestry – she is at once an emblem of her country and a strident observer, having carefully documented her family in a recent BBC documentary aptly titled Village Style. Hailing from the very same rural village in south west Wales, Dagmar advocates for creativity borne from the Celtic nations; “an identity”, she says, “that sits a little different to a British or English identity”, as a country with its own native language, rich history, and vibrant future.

Having studied a technical arts degree funded by Madame Tussauds at UAL, Dagmar began her film career by exploring figurative sculpture and life drawing with clay, creating a physical legacy for artists and activists challenging narratives and stigmas in human difference. Dagmar’s early sculpture work led her to Adam Pearson, an actor, presenter, and campaigner with a keen interest in how we can tackle disability hate crime as someone with Neurofibromatosis Type 1, a genetic condition that causes excess body tissue to grow predominately on his face. Adam and Dagmar struck up a fond friendship, and went on to collaborate on a sculpture of Adam’s face that uses art as a medium of capturing his identity beyond disfigurement.

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It’s been a busy few years for the artist and director. As well as performances at dance mecca Sadler’s Wells and London’s experimental hub Cafe OTO, Magnus has scored the soundtrack for Paolo Carzana’s runway at London Fashion Week and performed for Louis Vuitton.

Right now, Magnus Westwell is inside, awaiting the start of the performance. Their Company, Bright Storm Group, is made up of trained and untrained dancers and tonight they’ll premier this 20-minute piece which takes clubs and raves as its inspiration. It twists, deconstructs and amplifies the kind of moves you might see under dancefloor strobe lights into something wholly new.

“It feels powerful, in the individual rhythms of each person’s performance,” says Westwell. “It’s very musical and rhythmical. Repetition, loops, and what that can do. It feels like a deconstruction of music and dance. The artists never really face the audience.”

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Inspired by the work ethic of his grandfather, the wit of his mother and, above all, the migrant experience of growing up in the United Kingdom, the project harnesses South Asian drums, Dancehall rhythms and a collaborative spirit that can be found in Balraj Samrai’s work across all of the above.

Thanks to our Your Space Or Mine series, the name of the project will be up on billboards all over the city that was so important to its creation.

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Effie Ioannou has travelled across the world and lived in various places, but none have felt more like home than Scotland. The fashion and wedding photographer grew up in Cyprus, ultimately moving to Edinburgh to study and hasn’t left since. Recently engaged to a Scottish man, Ioannou tells me it’s not the only reason she’s lived here for more than 11 years, “I’ve always felt welcome. As much as I complain about the weather, I do love it.” Ioannou’s work celebrates the city she calls home through a cinematic lens, heightening the human senses and bringing fantasy to the everyday. 

Now part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine series, Ioannou’s work will be featured across Edinburgh’s historical streets such as Leith Walk. The images will strut along with the people and visitors of Edinburgh – inviting them to step into the world of Effie Ioannou. Although she has been working in this field for only a short time, the photographer has already seen her work published in Vogue Greece but what’s next? The cover. Whether gathering a group of horses, sourcing a retro ball pit or using the local Wetherspoons, Ioannou’s visions often stem from the locations. “…I just scout for fun places and then I say to myself, ‘Okay what would be the most absurd thing to do here?’” 

Although the photographer has no professional training, it’s clear Ioannou has the dedication to learn the craft or rather, learn her own craft. She is self-deprecating and humble, but her work treads across new ground lead by a clear vision. “I just dove right into it and that’s just what came out of it. It was a lot of work when I first started – I was literally just working, every waking moment on it, but it was because I was having fun.” Fun is a word Ioannou carries through her creative language. We catch glimpses of this in her free-hand brushes of colour and mysterious narratives. 

And what should people take away from these Hollywood scenes? “I would like to think that these photographs are for everyone who would like to do photography, and I feel I’m a good proof of that because I haven’t done it for a long time.” Communication is how Ioannou explains we grow and learn from one another, and that’s what these photographs display – the journey behind creating something and the importance of trying. The billboards will feature epic scenes from Ioannou’s mind that live beyond realism, evoking a fun narrative. Below we speak to Effie Ioannou about the importance of collaboration, community, and having the confidence to step outside creative barriers – because that’s where the magic happens.

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As part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s ongoing Your Space Or Mine project, the album and its reflective imagery is taking over poster sites across London – the artist’s very own stomping ground. 

Musician, DJ, broadcaster, curator, and producer Iqbal’s openness to converging people and places is perhaps what enables her to turn her hand to so many disciplines and find the flow of where they can take her. Having studied Ethnomusicology with History for her undergraduate degree at SOAS, an MA in History, law conversion and the bar followed – but, as she notes, ‘I felt like there was something in the universe pulling me’. This put her always-nurtured passion for music front and centre. Now, she’s toured the world (with live shows and as a DJ), holds a regular slot on NTS (for a decade and counting), has composed music for the Turner Prize, is a fixture on BBC Radio, and has collaborated with Wolfgang Tillmans. This year, she’s a guest director for Brighton Festival. 

Talking to Iqbal, you can see how she’s carefully connected the dots between a love of music, discovery, and sharing – three passions that work so well together – to succeed in making her own music alongside everything else. ‘I never want to be boxed in, and I never want to feel like I should only do one thing,’ she says. ‘Whether it’s me playing a DJ gig for a dancefloor, or doing a radio show, or talking about my new album, or putting on a Glory to Sound event where I invite different artists to come and perform, it’s all about sharing and exchange of ideas and feelings.’

The post On her second album, Nabihah Iqbal assembles her experiences into an upbeat and hopeful dreamscape first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

Based upon the book of the same name by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author bell hooks, the project will see artists creating works inspired by its radical new ways to think about love in politics, religion, the workplace and domestic households, as much as intimate relationships. ‘All About Love’ is curated by Zarina Rossheart. 

Taking over our billboard and poster sites for weekends across five months, ‘All About Love’ is travelling to Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Brighton and Bristol. On 28-30 April, Birmingham-born Kenyan artist Grace Ndiritu opened the project with Grief: A Love Letter, 2023, alongside a performative reading event at Digbeth Art Space where a programme of artists and writers joined her in reading on grief and love. 

The next commission saw Glaswegian artist Jasleen Kaur taking over poster sites in her home city from 9-11 June, alongside her solo show, Alter Altar, at Tramway. Following this, ‘All About Love’ travelled to Manchester on 7-9 July, with Eve Stainton’s work displayed focusing on the adage, ‘You can take the girl out of Manchester, but you can’t take Manchester out of the girl.’ Next, the project landed on the south coast in Brighton and Hove, on 3-6 August with Turner Prize winner Helen Cammock, and then with Asmaa Jama in Bristol on 7-10 September, the closing weekend of their solo exhibition, Except this time nothing comes back from the ashes, at Spike Island. We were thrilled to then take the project to Edinburgh with Alberta Whittle, in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland, who’s powerful work brought ‘All About Love’ to a close. 

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The Londoner – who recently joined the ranks of post-Brexit Irish citizens – knows about the subject first hand. She went through major family bereavements including the death of her sister in an accident in New York in 2011, and of both parents.  

Grief and loss of all kinds have become a powerful force in her work, including most recently, the Grief Rave. This latest project is a collaboration with The Loss Project founded by Carly Attridge, and the Street Soundsystem, creating dance spaces where bereaved people can dance it out.

Her billboard artwork for Your Space Or Mine tells a story about music and movement in bold primary colours, evoking the ways that the dancefloor can bring us together with loved ones – even those who aren’t with us any more. “I want people to feel the warmth of togetherness,” she says. “We know that can’t happen in this world – we can’t bring our living and our dead together – but we can cultivate that feeling. We can carry those we have loved and lost with us through life, with our feet and our moves and our bodies.” The accompanying words come courtesy of writer Lara Haworth. 

The post Grief powers The Fandangoe Kid in beautiful and unexpected ways, including her latest invention with Carly Attridge of The Loss Project: the Grief Rave first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

The Londoner had begun his creative endeavours DJing and running a blog inspired by the grime he was hearing at club nights like FWD>> at Plastic People. The blog turned into a popular and influential club night, initially at Cable in London, and then into a label of the same name, issuing proper big tunes like S-X’s ‘Wooo Riddim’ and managing artists including Flava D, Swindle, Royal T and DJ Q. Along the way, he’s also worked with youth projects including a stint with Brighton’s Lighthouse and helping Youth Music set up their NextGen fund.

The Yellow Squares started as scribbled post-it notes which the Walthamstow resident gradually began posting here and there, initially on Twitter and then on Instagram. He posted daily in the summer of 2021 and rebooted the following January, posting the now-consistent design hundreds of times in 2022. It was a way of sharing his ideas and instigating conversation with the communities he connected with online, using comments as a kind of R&D lab. They created a powerful place for exploring ideas and generating ways in which people can navigate their way through the interlocking complications of money, art and creativity.

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Emerging from Brisbane in 2016, Confidence Man was formed by a group of four mates messing about with music at the weekends. This casual project, initially conceived with the “basic goal” of having fun and getting high, gathered momentum rapidly. By the time they’d recorded their debut album Confident Music for Confident People in 2018, it became clear that this side hustle was something with the potential to go stratospheric.

Taking the best of 90s and 00s UK rave and pop and dragging it through honey, their irresistible tunes married the hedonism and euphoria of the dance floor with their irresistible if not slightly leftfield pop sensibilities. Combined with their arresting choreography, audacious lyrics and outlandish costumes (Planet apparently designs her own outfits, many of which possess a kind of eccentric theatricality reminiscent of BodyMap), the band set light to that summer’s festivals, making a name for themselves as a charismatic stylish foursome with a sound that captured the mood of the moment.

The post “Fresh, loud, in your face, OTT, fancy, and a bit trashy”: Confidence Man’s Sugar Bones on their new album and their wild times on tour first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

Mya’s poster featured a tree whose leaves were shaped like jigsaw pieces. The clusters of red, orange, yellow and green foliage dazzled but were conspicuous because despite the jigsaw motif none of the leaves were joined together. A simple and effective visual metaphor for those of us who feel displaced or out of kilter with society. The student artist talked very movingly about what it’s like to live on the autistic spectrum. And her brightly coloured text set against a swirling ultramarine background on the poster made a more general point: Not Every Disability Is Visible.

It’s always been part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s mission to work with established and emergent creatives – bringing creativity to the heart of our cities – so it makes sense that we support educational initiatives that are nurturing the next generation of people who might want to work in the field of communication. We already collaborate with Sheffield Hallam’s excellent Illustration BA so it makes sense to help mentor and offer a platform to even younger art and design students. Which is where the Big Creative Academy project comes in…

The post BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine initiative supports Walthamstow art and design students first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

For this instalment of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s collaborative Your Space Or Mine series, Caio Wheelhouse has designed a bespoke piece of artwork, with a seasonal spin on her latest release, Sound of the Morning, which is currently hitting the streets of Bristol. We sat down with Katy to discuss the album, and discover her personal highlights of living in Bristol, taking us on a guided tour of the city’s hotspots and hidden gems.

The post ‘Talk Over Town’: Katy J Pearson’s Essential Guide to Bristol first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

The beautiful game unites, inspires, creates communities, changes lives, and celebrates the passion that can exist within all of us. That’s why our latest Your Space Or Mine collaboration, One Game, is in partnership with Goal Click – the global football storytelling organisation – celebrating football’s vital place in local communities across the world.

Through our street poster campaign and exhibition, in London we’ll showcase Fleur Cousens and Anastasia Kuchta from Goal Diggers FC, a team widening opportunities for women and non-binary players; Maria Romanchenko, a player originally from Enakievo in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, but who now lives in London; and Zayan, a player for Bloomsbury Football’s U15s, a London-based charity running teams to reduce the barriers to sport participation and working to provide equality of access to all.

Taking over our sites in the north-west of England, Manchester Laces’ Beth Lane and Charlotte Wilkins share words about the city’s first inclusive women’s and non-binary football club for ages 16-55 in Whalley Range, all united to fight for trans issues in the sport. The Welsh capital of Cardiff will see Iifan Auchep Venkatanathan’s documentation of his time representing Indonesia in the 2019 Homeless World Cup in the city, where 500 players from over 50 countries travelled to Wales to play in the tournament. Two of our London takeovers will also host Football Across Borders, an international collection of quotes from One Game’s teams alongside players from Iran, India, Brazil and more. Connecting the dots further across continents and oceans, we’ve also teamed up with original flyposting experts UNCLE, who are sharing Goal Click stories in New York City, Amsterdam, and Berlin – cities each with their own rich individual footballing cultures.

Photography by and of the teams and their players will occupy our street space in each of their cities with their own stories. Both the realism and beauty shown in each portrait, action shot, or quiet moment demonstrate the truth and purity of football. Captured through film photography, everyday experiences of football’s ability to bring people together are retold by people who know it first-hand.

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After two summers of an eerie silence, courtesy of the pandemic’s social distancing rules, this year fields across the country were finally brought back to life as thousands found their way back to some of the UK’s most iconic festivals. In celebration of the summer festival revival, BUILDHOLLYWOOD partnered with Photoworks, a UK-based charity that champions photography for everyone. The collaboration saw one young creative’s work spotlighted at a series of festival exhibitions, but also on billboards across London.

Chosen to spearhead the project, Nathaniel Bailey is a 22-year-old up-and-coming photographer hailing from a Jamaican family in London. After developing an interest in photography in his early adolescence, it was towards the end of secondary school that he began considering his hobby as a career. “In year 11, my family started to see my passion for photography, and how much I enjoyed it. They loved looking through all the work I was bringing home in my big art folder. They really encouraged me to think about it as a career,” Bailey explained to us. Eventually, he began to find solace in his passion, stating that, “During this time, my Gran passed away, so photography was something positive to focus on. Later that same year, my Aunt sadly passed away too. She would have always told me to keep going with my photography, no matter what.”

Having recently graduated from UAL Camberwell College of Arts, where he honed his craft studying a BA in Fine Art Photography, Bailey explained to us that the biggest takeaway from his studies is that, “there are no limits to photography, trust your instinct”.

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Fire Complex was originally conceived to be seen on digital and paper billboards in the public realm. Kögelsberger wanted the work to record the catastrophic loss of a unique ecosystem and chart the aftermath of the fire. Both in terms of its effect on local communities and the post-inferno clean-up of mountainsides crowded with innumerable charred monoliths. As well as still photography between December 2020 and December 2021 the artist filmed numerous videos of strike teams felling the blackened trunks of these once glorious trees whose post-fire remains threaten roads, powerlines and the few buildings left standing.

Visual iterations of the project are complemented by restorative efforts. For every video posted on Instagram @fire_complex Kögelsberger has pledged to plant replacement trees. The first batch of 144 young sequoias arrived courtesy of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive. To date more than 6000 seedlings have been planted by the Sequoia Crest, Alpine Village and Cedar Slope communities with the support of specialist bodies, residents and over 100 local volunteers.

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Fascinated by space and how we inhabit it, he initially gravitated toward street photography because it appealed to his curiosity about people, style, and how we signify group belonging. But these interests eventually coalesced in the creation of TSAU, the acclaimed design studio founded by Agyemang which draws on his vast range of influences to create beautiful garments and objects which distil his ever-evolving personal style and his interest in artisanal techniques. “It’s an acronym of The Space Around Us,” he explains. “‘us’ being everyone.”

Talking to me over Zoom, he’s sat in a beautiful, considered-looking room with Moroccan plastered walls and a daybed scattered with bold, embroidered cushions. Sun streams in through a Victorian sash window and it feels like an appropriate convergence of the very London and African design elements that recur throughout the visual language of his work.

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Time and time again, artists on the rise have proved there are no limitations on art and artists are not always born after taking the traditional route of studying art. That is exactly how artists like Patricia Bugembe find and claim their space in the world of art.

After growing up in Ethiopia, Bugembe moved to Sheffield to study Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. “I come from a long line of people who work in the mental health and medical field. My grandfather was a psychiatrist, my mother is a psychologist, and my elder sister is a paediatrician that specialises in neurodevelopmental conditions. And so, then I followed suit and went into psychology and neuroscience so I too could work with people with autism and other neurological conditions,” she explained. It was not until a few years ago, when she turned to drawing as a form of release, that she realised her artistic talent and began to hone her craft.

Since discovering the power of art when experiencing a tough time, Bugembe brought some of her friends together and created the ultimate judgement-free environment: a relaxed art club. “There’s no teacher who “There’s no teacher who knows who will tell us what’s right or wrong. Just us, so we feel the freedom to just sit and draw. With no teacher, and no experts, we’re all exploring from the inside out.” said Bugembe. “So, it’s more about just trying and seeing what comes out, we all just enjoy being free to create whatever,” As well as using her passion to encourage others, Bugembe has also used her rising success as a means of fundraising and helping others. Bringing together her love for art and mental health, Bugembe has raised funds to help black women access psychological therapy through Art for Therapy. On top of this, Bugembe also donates a percentage of her annual shares to the organisation Black Minds Matter.

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Gaurab Thakali’s artworks are the product of the rich inner landscape of his imagination, hued with the vibrant colours of Kathmandu, populated and soundtracked by the musicians he’s most deeply inspired by, and informed by his encounters with a series of alluring subcultures. His distinctive work has appeared in prestigious publications such as The New York Times and The New Yorker, and his illustrations have also adorned clothing, skateboards, beer cans, record sleeves, and turntables. Defined by their saturated colours and gradients delineated by bold line work, his work moves between psychedelic landscapes, city life, and snow-topped mountain ranges, incorporating mystical elements with features of the everyday, while nature – at its most abundant and riotous – is ubiquitous.

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After completing Graphic Design studies at Leeds Polytechnic in 1989 and going on to gain an MA at the Royal College of Art in London Burrill’s early career was concerned with making his way as a commercial graphic designer. But, as he explained in a recent interview for D&AD’s New Blood digital festival, “There’s always a tension working commercially […] delivering other people’s messages that maybe I didn’t believe in myself. I very gradually began to kind of move away into something that was more fulfilling and nourishing for me as a person.”

The first major project where Burrill was able to use his penchant for brevity, wit and bold typography came in 1997 working with Erik Kessels on a campaign for Hans Brinker’s budget hotel in Amsterdam. His kitchen table, cut ‘n’ paste collage approach chimed perfectly with the creative brief: namely to flip the failings of very shoddy accommodation and non-existent facilities into USPs.

It worked a treat. At a time when advertising graphics were leaning towards the ‘slick and sophisticated’ – read busy and a bit oblique – Burrill’s clarity, humour and plain-speaking shone through. That success eventually meant he could work on select commercial jobs as well as lending his skills to charities and pressure groups close to his heart and pursuing personal projects.

The post Celebrated graphic artist, printmaker and designer Anthony Burrill shares a message of patience, hope and positivity across the UK first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

Not exactly a new idea. But potentially a goer. You’d have thought anyway. Pop star Damon Albarn gave it his best shot. He nominated works by Banksy and kennardphillipps. For the art/activist duo Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps this was, “A chance to use a public place to make an iconic image that would reflect the hopes of millions, to make an image of hope after a year of war.”

And so it came to pass. In 2003, as part of their joint research prior to submitting an image for Orange’s ‘Brighten Up London’ project, Kennard and Phillipps found themselves in The National Gallery. At the time, in Room 32, ‘The Virgin in Prayer’ by the Italian artist Sassoferrato caught their eye and a number of ideas and themes coalesced resulting in a piece the art duo would put forward for projection.

For their ‘Peace on Earth’ work kennardphillipps swapped the face of the Virgin Mary in Sassoferrato’s deeply devotional portrait for an image of planet earth seen from space. Above her bowed head, where you might expect to see a halo, there’s a slanted iteration of CND’s peace symbol. Conscientious objector Gerald Holtom, writing to the editor of Peace News, explained the origins of his 1958 design: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself, the representative of an individual in despair, with palms outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.’

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Born and bred in the capital, Chapters has lived all over north London but he still hasn’t yet exhausted the city’s vast possibilities. “London has shown me a lot. It’s taught me a lot,” he marvels. “There’s a lot of different worlds within this one city and, yeah, man, it’s crazy.” His photographs distil the dirt, dynamism, and joy of the urban landscape, paying tribute to the idiosyncrasies, resilience, spirit, and style of his beloved wider community.

Now, as part of the latest artist iteration of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space or Mine, Chapters’ photographs will be displayed for the first time on billboards on the very streets that inspired his work – including one location in Gospel Park that’s particularly close to his heart. He explains, “I was born five minutes up the road, man.”

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Since JACK and Ahluwalia first collaborated for Your Space Or Mine back in March 2021, Ahluwalia has continued on an understandably impressive trajectory, working with huge industry names like Mulberry and GANNI; founder and Creative Director Priya Ahluwalia has also been nominated as a Leader of Change Honouree at The Fashion Awards 2021.

With Priya’s creative and conceptual eye driving Ahluwalia forward, the brand’s SS22 offering is another impressive step. As the first joint menswear and womenswear drop, the collection is set to celebrate the artistry of Afro-Caribbean hair, its symbolism, and rituals, through braid-inspired prints, embroidery, and seams woven throughout the pieces. With fluid lines and silhouettes accompanied by perfectly contrasting tones, the collection sees Ahluwalia taking inspiration from retro hair salon imagery, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere’s photography, and redolent 90s music videos.

Showcasing the immersive Ahluwalia world in all its glory, the Parts of Me shoot forms the perfect basis for Your Space Or Mine takeovers across London, launching integral SS22 pieces on the streets. Shot by London-based photographer Laurence Ellis and styled by AnOther Magazine’s Senior Fashion Editor Nell Kalonji, it’s a broad showcasing of talents, exuding equal-parts warmth, futurism and festivity.

We loved working with Ahluwalia to create the artwork for each takeover – taking into consideration the street spaces as we know them – and providing the platform for the brand’s SS22 collection to occupy streets around the capital. Our Your Space Or Mine project continues to broaden its fashion focus by supporting up-and-coming designers, placing their work directly within the communities that inspired them all over the country.

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From the start of her career to now, Ronan Mckenzie has quickly established herself as one of UK’s most authentic and multifaceted creatives. Born and raised in Walthamstow, East London, her rise to success saw Mckenzie progress from a beaming young artist participating in an art foundation and internship at i-D magazine to a highly skilled creative with a plethora of titles under her job description.

Developing on her background in styling, lockdown saw Mckenzie delve into the design world after a newfound interest in sewing pushed her to launch her own brand Selasi. But her versatility did not stop there, last year also saw Mckenzie launch HOME – a black-owned multifunctional creative space in North London that features an art gallery, community events location and creative workspace. “HOME responds directly to the personal and communal need for a more honest and representative space, that cares deeply for the artists we present and the community of people that we welcome into our space” she told us, speaking on what pushed her to launch the project.

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Adam Jones’ spiritual home is the traditional boozer. Finding the decor of these British institutions endlessly inspiring, he tells us, “When you’ve got an eye for fashion, you can’t help but notice the wood against the green pool table on top of those red, brown, orange sun-bleached carpets. It’s a lot of colour and texture for the mind. You could just sit down there and make the entire collection out of that room.”

The 30-year-old fashion designer with an eye for kitsch has made a name for himself by repurposing original beer towels and turning them into a range of distinctive, genderless fashion (which have recently been spotted on the likes of Dua Lipa, Nothing But Thieves, and Sports Team). He even used a pub – where he had a bar job at the time – as a venue to show his first collection during London Fashion Week 2015.

In the wake of launching his latest collection, Jones is the most recent emerging designer in our ongoing Your Space Or Mine project. Shot by photographer Luke Million, this series of billboards feature Jones’ newest sartorial creations presented alongside classic archive pieces and photographed on location in a South London former-Job Centre-turned-bar – a time capsule of peak-1970s decor.

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Some pictures were never meant to be seen. That’s what makes our collaboration with Matty Bovan, the latest in our Your Space Or Mine series, so exciting. The collection of posters features images of Matty in his studio trying on his own pieces, fitting photos that were only ever intended for personal reference. Collaged together with bright, eye-catching colours alongside his playful logo, they are evocative of DIY zines and offer a rare insight into the designer’s process. He designed every poster himself, intending to get across a “certain energy” intended to convey his personal energy into the spectacle of each.

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“What’s that man doing lying down there dad?” So piped up a young lad on seeing Ben Wilson sprawled across the ribbed metal floor of London’s Millennium Footbridge. Despite the fact that Wilson was wielding a tiny brush and surrounded by pots of acrylic enamel paint the kid could be forgiven for asking the question because the work itself was so small you had to get on your hands and knees to focus on the teeny-weeny figure! “Good on yer Ben. You’re a star. Your stuff’s better than half of what they’ve got going on over there,” bugled another enthusiastic passerby waving her arm breezily towards Tate Modern.

Suffice to say that Wilson’s trademark paintings on splats of disregarded gum are true crowd pleasers. He can spend hours on a single work. The paintings range in styles. There are black and white calligraphic designs with whirling lines and forms that reveal worlds within worlds. Sometimes he’ll opt for a meticulous painterly representation of people and places that he can see from the site where the gum is found. On other occasions he creates fabulous tiny abstract designs that incorporate dedications to folk, texts painted seemingly with a single brush hair that celebrate or commemorate persons, places or events dear to Wilson or are suggested by people who happen across him at work.

Asked what artists he likes Wilson rattles off various names that suggest the range of his own creative past, “Oh, Jackson Pollock, Andy Goldsworthy, Dave Nash, Andy Warhol, Stik, outsider artists…” Wilson has previously built beautifully crafted wooden sculptures and environments, painted billboards, created assemblages out of litter found in the streets, filled numerous sketchbooks with observational drawing, made ceramic tiles, established trails above the arctic circle and elsewhere across the world. He added, “And the painter printmaker Peter Green was very supportive when I was younger. I like all artists. What’s really most important to me is the immensity of human creativity.”

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While the last month finally saw the grand return to art galleries and creative spaces, the process of going and enjoying an exhibition is still not quite as accessible as it once was – with the backlog of exhibitions creating an extremely long waitlist for tickets. However, thankfully for art lovers all over London, curator Tanaka Saburi has collaborated with BUILDHOLLYWOOD for the second year in a row to bring an exhibition to the most accessible location of them all, the streets.

If there’s one thing, in particular, that is clear when talking to Tanaka Saburi is his naturally determined and hardworking demeanour. Born to a Zimbabwean family and raised in Birmingham, he attended Keele University to complete his undergraduate degree in Law and Liberal Arts. With the initial intention of becoming a painter, Saburi’s interest in curation was birthed when he moved to London in 2017 to work on Savile Row. Since, Saburi has occupied important roles at Paul Smith, Joseph and Richard James (where he currently works through the week). Extending beyond tailoring, his responsibilities have included working on merchandising and PR. “I used to go to all the northern cities and show them how to display Paul Smith suiting in certain ways, how to show it off and understand the mix between art and fashion for him in his context,” he explained.

Launched last year, during the height of the pandemic alongside designer Nina Kunzendorf, The Molasses Gallery is a space to promote the work of young artists of colour. The first iteration of the collaboration with Your Space or Mine featured 12 artists, with a theme inspired by the 1975 poem “To a Black Artist” by Gordon Parks. This time around the exhibition entitled ‘commodities’ focuses on the relationship young up-and-coming artists of colour have with the concept of value and commercial success.

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Borden was at the top of his game photographing famous faces when life changes caused a shift to making more personal work. His first book paired compelling portraits of Holocaust survivors together with their memories, handwritten and harrowing. Combining life stories and images, where a reader’s attention moves between the two to create numerous connections, was a format he wanted to pursue further. Thornton’s longstanding fascination with trees led to a joint interest in exploring the different ways people are involved with the arboreal world today. It proved to be a fertile and hugely rewarding venture.

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Sports Banger is a true from-below phenomenon, punching up and talking back to authority. Born from the tradition of anti-establishment DIY culture, the acclaimed clothing brand is making an art form of conspicuous, unapologetic bootlegging. Founded in 2013 by Jonny Banger – an artist working across fashion, activism, culture and curation, music, publishing and so much more – Sports Banger channels the frustrations, passions, dreads, and hopes of a generation. Always focused on community, Jonny explains, “Sports Banger is a celebration of people, our relationships with each other, and the outside world. We know lots of people from all different worlds and we like to bring everyone together. Everyone we work with, there’s a personal relationship there somewhere. The most important thing is art and fun.”

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To coincide with Record Store Day on June 12^th, BUILDHOLLYWOOD will unveil its one-of-a-kind street gallery with billboard images from legendary photographers Mick Rock and Pogus Caesar displayed alongside those from up-and-coming photographers Denisha Anderson and Steven M. Wiggins in London, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

The project will see iconic photographs of renowned musicians including Jay-Z, Madonna, Grace Jones, Dizzie Rascal, Debbie Harry and Stevie Wonder appear alongside emerging talents like Wu-Lu, Scrufizzer, Sketch and Oscar Jerome. Displayed in cities throughout the UK, the striking images bring bold music photography into the heart of the community – and onto the very streets which inspired many of the musicians who are featured.

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Caesar has documented prominent figures in the music industry alongside key historical events including the Handsworth Riots in 1985. He often reworks 35mm negatives into new forms, challenging the notion of religion, sex, history and identity from a Black British perspective.

As a music fan and scholar, Caesar was thrilled when he got the opportunity to be able to document some of his musical icons from the 80s onwards. Over the years, these photographs formed his ‘Muzik Kinda Sweet’ project, where Caesar takes globally renowned artists and captures them in everyday situations.

“When I took these images, it was about trying to photograph the artists outside the context of their stardom,” Caesar says of the street locations where he took many of his photos. “A lot of images and portraits of musicians are usually very shiny and staged. I wanted the opposite of that…I wanted to capture them in a natural setting to illustrate that. It was always important for me to show they’re just ordinary people who do extraordinary things.”

Caesar’s work has been exhibited widely and is acclaimed for documenting Black British history from the street. In 2004, he established OOM Gallery Archive in Birmingham, which represents his photographic archive worldwide.

Caesar spoke to us to reflect on his career, what it’s like taking an image of a musician in an ordinary setting like the street and what he hopes the public will take from the project.

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Rock has been responsible for some of the most iconic album covers of all time – from Queen’s Queen II, Joan Jett’s I Love Rock and Roll, Lou Reed’s Transformer, Coney Island Baby and Rock N Roll Heart as well as Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power, and The Ramones End of the Century.

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Anderson’s work for the project takes two of her musician friends and puts them in a street setting, in the centre of the communities where they grew up. Challenging both the viewer and her subjects, her striking images reveal much about music from South London, the street influences which define her subject’s style as well as the community that shaped them all as artists.

Anderson drew on a wealth of experience for the project which included debuting a long-term project ‘MAN’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2018, contributing work to ‘The Self Portrait’ – an exhibition curated by Ronan Mackenzie and working alongside acclaimed filmmakers Spike Lee, Daniel Mulloy and Joost Vandebrug.

 “I aim to empower my subject, whilst disrupting the pre-conceptions viewers may feel towards them,” Anderson says of her work. Here, she reveals more about the artists in her photos, their creation and why she is excited to see the pictures on the streets where they were taken.

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With subjects as vast as childhood friends who have been involved with gang violence, Notting Hill carnival revellers, council estates, everyday characters you see on the street to leading grime and rap artists, his work culminates in a dark, gritty and unique look at modern life in London.

His pictures for this project come from the grime and rap world, with all photographed on the streets where they’re from. “This project is a brilliant way of celebrating two elements that feed off of each other – music and the street,” he says, adding he hopes it inspires others on the streets too.

“There’s also people from some backgrounds and social classes that have an interest in photography or art but may not feel like they’re welcome in gallery spaces so don’t ever think to visit one – this is why projects like this are needed because they essentially give everyone the opportunity to view art and photography in person.”

We caught up with Steven to find out more about his inspirations, the story behind his shots and what he hopes people will take away from his photographs.

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“I started Conversations From Calais after volunteering there for several organisations and every time I came back to London, I felt the need to share what I saw, heard and experienced. I felt so angry about how displaced communities were being portrayed in the media, especially when arriving in the UK from Northern France. I wanted to find a way to break away from this by remembering, documenting and commemorating all the different conversations I’d had with displaced people I’d met there. I thought this would be the simplest, rawest and most powerful way to share my experience. And slowly the project grew from there.”

The ‘refugee jungle’ in Calais may have been razed to the ground by French authorities in 2016 but there’s still a constant stream of displaced people stranded in the port city, anxiously seeking ways to reach the UK and apply for asylum.

Conversations From Calais bears witness to the multiple challenges facing these refugees and migrants. By recounting and sharing their chats with volunteers so many hitherto invisible, silent voices are recovered. “This ever-growing collection of conversations focuses on capturing the diversity of experiences and avoids creating new stereotypes of refugees as villains, heroic figures or hopeless victims.”

You noticed my cracked hands from the cold as we were having tea together. You insisted on  giving me some hand cream and told me to take care of my hands. I will never forget the kindness and warmth you showed me in that moment, even after all the hostility you had experienced from the world.

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“Art for me has been about expressing emotions I can’t explain another way. These paintings highlight my issues with barriers and hidden anxiety and mental health.”

As part of our ongoing Your Space Or Mine initiative to provide a platform for creatives on the street, we showcase a series of 14 vibrant paintings, on 7 billboards across Bristol, forming an outdoor gallery and trail to be enjoyed in a safe and accessible way by the local community. Jeff is “Hoping that these paintings bring colour and the light of hope to the viewer. I hope they encourage people who are down to look up!”

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Talking with King Owusu, we return continually to the idea of community. It’s the recurring element that influences, motivates, and facilitates his work as an artist and illustrator. Often drawn in marker pen, his colourful, narrative-led artworks are anchored in a fundamental desire to share some simple truths about humanity, community, and inclusivity, and to enlarge our empathy. He tells us, “One aspect of my work that is really important to me is its accessibility and telling stories that highlight and capture the black experience.”

Not only is his art highly influenced by his roots as the child of Ghanaian parents, it’s also informed by a spirit of generosity. His work is born from and of the communities that raised him, and he’s driven by a desire to give something back. Reflecting on his childhood as the youngest of seven, Owusu recalls, “At home, I was like a little fly on the wall just listening and taking in all the creativity that was being conjured up.” He remembers being particularly inspired by an art project his brother initiated in the local community. “He made all these really beautiful, detailed portrait paintings documenting the people growing up on our estate at the time,” he says, “Such a kind and simple concept.”

London itself is integral to Owusu’s practice, exposing him firsthand to a kind of visceral collaboration-in-action – the exciting moments where cultures collide and witnessing how these encounters can generate something new and dynamic. Growing up in Wood Green in North London, he was surrounded by a vibrant West African community alongside the wider multicultural influences the capital had to offer. “In London, we are blessed to have so many diverse people from all over the world that help build and shape our communities,” he tells us. “I have really appreciated and enjoyed the diversity not just in culture but also in ideas and ambitions.”

Whilst studying design at CSM, Owusu met South London photographer and filmmaker Campbell Addy, who signed him up on sight to his diversity-first agency, Nii. As a model, Owusu has been featured in Love magazine, Dazed & Confused, and Farfetch. Considering the exciting and inextricable relationship between fashion and art, he says, “Fashion also creates the opportunity for art to be made into textiles and for print to be worn. I think about the t-shirts Keith Haring made which made his work more affordable and accessible to a wider audience.”

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In November 2020 we celebrated their achievements and supported their NS Yearbook initiative, a project showcasing the work of emerging, black, British musicians, with a nationwide poster campaign.

Theirs is a story of triumph, driven by community spirit, hard work, perseverance and a passion for entertaining the masses. The drive to make something great, unique and powerful when the odds are against you. The ability to see opportunity in the face of a crisis.

This documentary film that we created in collaboration with No Signal charts a year in the life of the innovative, rising stars of British radio and one of the most powerful forces in the British Music Industry today.

We couldn’t be more excited to announce that The Rise of No Signal: Black Radio – Here to Stay out now on BBC iPlayer.

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The concept of gathering stories from past and present global histories comes naturally to Ahluwalia, who grew up a kid of the diaspora with Indian and Nigerian heritage. As a native southwest Londoner she remembers being surrounded by hubs of migrant communities in the 90s, going to Tooting to get her hair done and travelling up to Southall with her family to go to the butchers.

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Drawing on a unique and stylish lexicon of cinematic references, his distinctive photographs often evoke the high-key colour of a Californian dreamscape. With its irresistible golden light, and that uncanny experience of boulevards and vistas you’ve encountered a thousand times before, as if in a dream or immortalised on the silver screen, California seems like the perfect home for Krug’s saturated, otherworldly images.

While influenced by the enduring aesthetic of the 1960s exploitation movies which he devoured as a youth, Krug’s vision seems to depict a world disorientingly dislocated from time. Like so many others prepared to make their home on a fault-line for the promise of eternal summer, the Kansas-born photographer was drawn to the Pacific Coast by the elusive, shimmering mirage of bygone California. “It’s something that doesn’t exist anymore,” he explains. “But it’s a place in our minds, and it’s present in the works I’ve made over the years.”

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“The last three years have seen fundamental changes to how we relate to one another as individuals and as a society. Britain has exited from the European Union; the pandemic has bought new geographies to our daily lives; Black Lives Matter has voiced powerful articulations of systemic inequality. Division/Revision is a reflection on how relations are being re-defined through seismic shifts in the current social and political landscape.”

Uta Kögelsberger

 

With everything in such a state of flux it seems fitting that participating artists’ work will appear on sixteen billboards and change daily for sixteen consecutive days in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow.

As you might expect the individual artworks are hugely diverse. From plain-speaking to intriguing, visually metaphoric to fantastical, playful to symbolic… Together they act as a fascinating, multi-perspectival intervention in the public realm that holds a mirror up to the turbulent and mutable times we are living through.

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In ‘Lockdown A Self Portrait’ – the first of nine photographs on poster sites throughout Glasgow and Edinburgh: the latest iteration of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Your Space Or Mine artists’ street display project – we see five images of Nadeau variously posed in the same small corner of a cluttered room.

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Spanky the hand is front and centre, as he often has been throughout a rise that’s seen Super Freak turn a passion into a career, featuring on the pages of the New York and LA Times as well as working with brands like Vans, Levi’s and Dr Martens. Whitehouse’s signature character has been a key part of his ‘Superverse’ since his inception – in his own words, Spanky ‘is generally the happiest hand around but pretty clumsy so often finds himself in odd predicaments’. The pure cartoonish fun of a happy hand simply having a good time has its own effect, but Super Freak’s work isn’t pure fantasy. In fact there’s something oddly satisfying about the juxtaposition between Spanky’s chirpy demeanour and some of the more downbeat accompanying messaging when reality does occasionally seep in.

Here, though, our brilliantly malleable hero has definitely been caught on one of his good days and is a picture of carefree contentment. To find out a bit more about his influences, process and message behind the work, we caught up with the man himself…

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One of the artist’s most recent creations is a 20ft high mural titled ‘Nous’ or ‘We’ (2020). It’s a striking, refulgent work made during a year that saw the BLM movement catapulting systemic racism to the fore of public consciousness, furthered the Brexit divide and witnessed an edge of the seat election in the US. Against a straw yellow disc Power’s painting features at its base a pair of crossed legs. This meditative pose dynamically morphs into two figures. They have one arm wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Their other hands are pressed palm to palm, overlapping and rendered in such a way as to mimic an anaglyph 3D effect. While our eyes bobble, the figures’ faces merge, their joined hands pulsing together, communicating ‘solidarity, unity and sisterhood’ as the artist intended.

As her ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ 2017 painted piano work suggests – part of Luke Jerram’s international project to install pianos in public spaces for passersby to play – Power holds a special place in her heart for music and the performing arts. Nowadays that seems more important than ever. As she says, “For many of us, boogying on a sticky dance floor at a bar, gig or party seems like a distant dream. I want to give a shout-out to performers, musicians and those in the events industry who have faced a particularly challenging year.”

Power’s collaboration with BuildHollywood’s Your Space Or Mine street display project will showcase a new work featuring a splashy trio of colossal dancers. Appearing on poster sites both singly and together they finger click, writhe and high kick ecstatically against plant forms reminiscent of Matisse’s late cut-outs. But there’s a suggestion too that the figures are dancing underwater. Okay one’s wearing boots but hey! They’re getting down like their lives depended on it, throwing shapes and strutting their vitality even while submerged beneath a barely visible weight. So imagine how much more euphoric and spirited their dancing will become if they ever surfaced. Likewise, you can be sure the dancing will be wild and free when we finally emerge from the gloomy depths of this pandemic. In the meantime Bristol’s streets are in for another treat.

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Yinka’s large scale pieces work with pops of colour to transform public spaces like Thassaly Road Bridge and Dulwich Pavilion into eye-catching, inspiring works of art. Much of his work spreads words of positivity, like a recent commission by Harrow Council, for which Yinka took over an entire wall with a show-stopping rainbow mural reading “LOVE ALWAYS WINS”. His new billboards, which will be live for the month of February, are characteristically bright. Utilising his signature colours and unmistakable eye for design, Yinka chose the words “IF YOU CAN DREAM THEN ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE”. With pink, bold outlined type against a playful background of green, yellows, pinks, and blues, it’s an eye-catching reminder that we are always allowed to dream.

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Chance happenings in Archer’s daily life also spark ideas: a scribbled note or list that blows across her path in the park; a childhood rhyme or song lyric that returns unexpectedly to mind; the shit things that happen as well as the often-underappreciated everyday pleasures such as dogs, sunshine, bird song and boxes of Mr Kipling’s Cherry Bakewells.

Her cutesy imagery is often cut, however, with an altogether opposing sentiment. That is, the world is sick. Archer often combines delighting, toothsome motifs with hand-painted words that come from the pit of the stomach. Her painting of a lamb, pink bow for a collar with its shiny black hooves frolicking amidst tulips, hibiscus and violets coupled with the phrase ‘My Life Is Crap’ is one example. Then there’s the orange-eyed, pale lilac kitten on a pink ground, an imploring image with an imploring phrase rendered in sunny yellow to go with it, ‘Text Me Yeah?’ A special favourite is a chalky white blancmange with a pinky-red jelly topping set against a grey background. This wobbly dessert is top and tailed with the words ‘Thank God,’ and ‘I’m Normal.’ Archer’s work draws the viewer in through a delighting image and at the same time talks of human frailty and random cruelties, neediness, fear and self-delusion that visit all of us.

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At the heart of everything they do is an impassioned commitment to candour, transparency and inclusivity across society and in particular the creative industries. Their campaigning for better pay and conditions for everyone – including ancillary staff and support workers – is inspiring. Working for better access, fair treatment and art/community spaces that do more than pay lip service to social engagement is their clarion call.

For the Your Space Or Mine collaboration TWP wanted to address some of the systemic injustices and inequalities that prop up a rarefied, hierarchical model of art production and consumption. Their ‘ideas for a new art world’ comprise direct and ambitious suggestions as to how things might be improved for the many and not just the few. Posters and billboards bearing sparse black text on a series of brilliant colour backgrounds – ‘Shiny Self Care’ blue; ‘Luvd Island’ red and ‘Soft e-Boi Blush’ pinky-lilac, to mention a few – echoing the website ‘Pube Pallete’ (courtesy TWP’s fave designer Amad Ilyas). These grey-day-defying interventions confront passers-by with plain speaking ideas such as ‘old guard gatekeepers need to step aside for diverse leaders that frequently evolve – in art and everything else as well to be honest.

What’s special about TWP is they walk the walk. A visit to thewhitepube.co.uk evidences independent and tireless effort. In their own words, “We decided to start writing and state how art made us feel (happy, bored, angry, in love). We try to write in a way where we would fall through feelings and write about the art along the way (someone would later tell us this is like embodied criticism: body first encounters in the gallery).” Not content to produce numerous, entertaining, always thoughtful and very much felt texts they also support new writers by dishing out grants, champion creatives through offering their site homepage as a rolling platform and provide resources that level the playing field for emerging talents.

Gabrielle and Zarina hail from and currently reside in Liverpool and London respectively – Instagram is their ‘office’ – so over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing TWP’s mini-manifesto for a fairer art world, and a more just society on billboards and street sites in both cities.

Follow them on Instagram, check out their artist shout-outs and read or listen to the sometimes provocative, always attentive, probing and reflective texts via their website. Oh, did I mention they’re also down to earth and often very funny. Taking the world and work seriously doesn’t mean being po-faced. TWP are a breath of fresh air, just what we need to kick off 2021.

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Who convinced the Williams Fairey Brass Band to transcribe and perform a repertoire of acid house music?

Who persuaded ex-miners and police officers to work with members of an historical re-enactment society to recreate the bloody last stand of British coal production?

Who took the buckled, rusty carcass of a motor vehicle bombed in Baghdad on a road trip from New York City to Los Angeles?

Who collaboratively directed a film, narrated by a chameleon, featuring a Japanese dance hall queen called Bom Bom competing for glory in a dusty Jamaican car park?

Who marked the Battle of the Somme 2016 centenary by dispatching across the UK thousands of volunteers dressed in authentic WWI uniforms? When approached they didn’t speak but handed out cards with the name and rank of one of the 20,000 soldiers killed on just the first day of fighting.

Who adores bats, represented Britain in the Venice Biennale with images of tax haven Jersey ablaze, and thinks we should be worshiping lobsters and squid not eating them?

The art wizard Jeremy Deller, that’s who. A man who seems to produce more in a month than I’ve managed in a lifetime. When detective Lieutenant Columbo was asked what made the director John Cassavetes so special he said the man had a most fertile mind.

Ditto Deller. He is a ringmaster who delights his audience. And Deller’s audience isn’t just the art crowd but pretty much anyone with a pulse. He loves to both pose and prompt questions, to entertain, to provoke, to explore, to better understand and share a fierce curiosity and compassionate engagement with people and diverse cultures.

There are works that quietly seethe at injustice: the material banners commissioned on which, writ large, are callous texts sent to employees exploited by the gig economy. Others, like his bouncy castle replica of Stonehenge, at first seem a vehicle for sheer physical joy but along with the somersaults is a critique as to what’s considered heritage, what it’s for and who it belongs to.

Last year Deller made Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984 – 1992. In this film he talks to a group of young students about the origins and development of rave culture in the context of social and technological change, how the ad hoc parties in abandoned factories in Northern towns across the UK were – like Thatcher’s defeat of the miners – a ‘death ritual’ that marked a transition from an Industrial to a Service economy. The 1980s was a time of desperate uncertainty, a pivotal decade economically, socially and politically. It looks like we’re about to launch into another one. Hold on to your bucket hats.

Some of Deller’s earliest exhibited artworks were the posters he made advertising imagined exhibitions, apocryphal events that perhaps only he wanted to see at the time. He’s gone on to produce works on billboards and further forays in the primal medium of the poster.

In 2017 his ‘Strong and Stable My Arse’ work in response to Theresa May’s election campaign phrase caught the mood of the nation. Just before the first COVID– 19 restrictions Deller’s equally blunt ‘Tax Avoidance Kills’ posters sprung up across London. With design collaborator Fraser Muggeridge during lockdown they produced and sold thousands of ‘Thank God For Immigrants’ posters in aid of refugee support and action tackling food poverty.

Street display addresses two of Deller’s key criteria in producing work: accessibility and participation. Another quality often evident is plain speaking. Which brings us to the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family’s current Your Space Or Mine collaboration with the artist. To coincide with Human Rights Day on Dec. 10th billboards throughout the country will carry a chilling reminder that all across the world people are being denied their basic human rights.

These stark, dolent works spotlight numerous locations where atrocities persist: the water poisoning in Flint, Michigan, USA; the treatment of refugees at Brook House, Gatwick, UK; the genocide of Muslim minority Rohingya people in Rakhine State, Myanmar; etcetera. The posters don’t go into detail. They simply point to the incongruity between a professed adherence to the universal declaration of human rights and what actually goes on across the world. All 193 member states of the United Nations sign up to the UDHR, and yet… and yet…

So, while 2020 has been a bit of a bummer, and the coming season looks like being more of a damp squib than festive bash, just thank your lucky stars you don’t live in Saudi Arabia, or Nigeria’s Borno State, or Minsk in Belarus… Wait a minute, that’s the point isn’t it? It’s not about geography. It’s about people and conscience and caring. A true Christmas message. And one that’s not just for Christmas.

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As the students were unable to show off their hard work at an end of year show as they would in previous years, we wanted to offer an inspiring alternative, bringing their work to the eyes of an even bigger audience.

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His love of music is another big influence that often seeps into his work, and especially his shows, which can be traced back to his parents who started one of Scotland’s first reggae nights in Dundee in the late 70s after meeting in the city. He cites the music he was exposed to growing up as a key part of his creative education and built on his family’s history by recreating Reggae Klub for one night only at V&A Dundee last year with his dad Jeffrey, aka IMan SLYGo, playing records and his mum Maureen leading a knitting workshop.

Challenging the notion of what fashion shows ‘should’ be, his AW18 collection ‘Red Clay’ drew on the fashion of Miles Davis and was presented in the form of London artists including James Massiah and Nabihah Iqbal performing while wearing the pieces. He’s also worked with Adidas and Fred Perry, again taking inspiration from the latter’s musical heritage fusing punk and reggae for a AW20 collection that featured a liberal sprinkling of tartan among reworked classics. Community in collaboration are important to Daley too – together with Fred Perry he launched a grant for unsigned artists to go along with his collection and a section of the profits from his Reggae Klub t-shirts went to jazz education and artist development organisation Tomorrow’s Warriors.

The BUILDHOLLYWOOD family are excited to be linking up with Nicholas for his first poster campaign as we begin a series of fashion collaborations at a tough time for the industry and emerging designers in particular. With spaces across London, we’re celebrating Daley with a retrospective of his last year’s work featuring the photography of Piczo and Bolade Banjo as well as the illustrations of Gaurab Thakali. The campaign also highlights his upcoming 2021 Now Gallery immersive exhibition RETURN TO SLYGO, a ‘celebration of music, culture, fashion and ancestry’ which will blend his three core values of community, culture and craftsmanship. The campaign will also start up again for a second phase before London Fashion Week in February. Check out the interview below.

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The first studio album in eight years Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres said they knew they were onto something special when Rolling Stone writer David Fricke – having already supplied the sleeve notes – asked for more time, “to do the album justice.” The hunch proved right as the disc later went on to feature in 2020’s album of the year recommendations in Mojo, BBC Radio 6 Music, Uncut, Record Collector, Shindig! and more.

BUILDHOLLYWOOD were, of course, on board for the original poster campaign back in March. Singh explains that the artwork – featuring an androgynous warrior/saint-like character – was designed by long-time Cornershop friend and collaborator Nick Edwards. “…It’s certainly part of the charm of the album, we thought it was different and striking enough to make a great street poster. The image provokes questions, like the album title itself.”

Singh went on to observe, “One positive thing about the enforced isolation so many endured was that more and more people got to listen to the record and the albums upbeat nature helped people stay positive.” It is a brilliant, multi-layered listen. Full of thoughtful lyric provocations and their characteristic synthesis of instruments and broad musical influences while at the same time it’s unabashedly dancey and fun with earworms to spare.

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‘Kid A’s panoramas of power were fuelled in part by 1990s news reports of war in former Yugoslavia; visuals for ‘OK Computer’ derived from imagining a nuclear winter, the aftermath of human devastation; abstract imagery for a ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ evoke the unpredictability and power of the elements.

Likewise, the stark, graphic rendition of London deluged by floods for Thom Yorke’s solo album ‘The Eraser’ pictures man made doom. And there’s work like Ness (pub. 2018) – a collaboration with nature writer Robert Macfarlane – inspired by and portraying a very strange landscape, the shingle spit of longshore drift known as Orford Ness in Suffolk. Donwood started making imagery with materials found on the coast: sea coal, mud and clay. But as is often the case with this artist – who is so flexibly and sensitively attuned to making work that elicits feelings, experience and senses beyond words – the chosen media morphed to fine penmanship, detailed drawings that capture both the ephemeral atmospheres and architectural archaeology of a strip of land that’s been used for decades as a military test site. Bad Island published earlier this year on the cusp of UK’s COVID-19 pandemic is a stunning and stark wordless graphic saga. Eighty monochromatic lino prints made over a period of two years chronicle both the discovery of a rich and magical world and, with a sense of inevitability, its destruction.

So what’s with the work showcased in this latest Your Space Or Mine outing for BUILDHOLLYWOOD? Are we seeing Donwood’s sunnier side? “I’m trying to make pictures that elicit some kind of happiness. It’s a novel concept for me,” said the artist. Looking at the vertically formatted Sol, its giant refulgent sun almost seems able to warm viewers’ faces. It is a beautifully pared down design with rich flora in the foreground and skeins of woven luminosity emanating from the star at the centre of our solar system. The source of light and life.

A larger work called Set will appear on 48 sheet billboards and other sites across the country. A detail from a fundraiser released through Donwood’s new imprint The Lost Domain, Set shows a squall of birds silhouetted against a raging sky. It is sublime, and uplifting but still, there’s clearly unnerving depths to Donwood’s foray into cheering the nation.

That said, in an effort to chime with the artist’s newfound shift towards brighter subject matter, we embarked on a light-hearted chat with Donwood, proposing a baker’s dozen of questions covering fashion, beauty, celeb and lifestyle news. All in a further bid to temper the mood of gloom that stalks the land. Here we go:

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Earlier this year, we spotlighted Mark Titchner’s artwork PLEASE BELIEVE THESE DAYS WILL PASS in a series of bright posters which offered a rallying cry for hope and endurance across nation during the early days of the pandemic. With the UK back behind closed doors, we are collaborating with Mark once again to showcase 4 new inspiring artworks on our sites across the capital as we head into the grey winter months. It includes the messages HOPE REVEALS THE WORLD, THERE WILL BE A WAY, THE SUN RISES BRIGHT and THE FUTURE WILL BE BUILT FROM TODAY.

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Perhaps a style of visual art that produces perceptual ambiguity, illusion and contradictions is particularly fitting to the times we’re living through now. If the ground isn’t literally shifting beneath our feet a half-glimpse at the news, wary trips to the shops or any attempt to plan something concrete in coming weeks, perhaps months, induces a debilitating dizziness at the uncertainty of it all.

The Your Space Or Mine Build Hollywood street displays in Sheffield currently feature works by the award winning local artist Rob Lee. He is more than a dab hand at the skills required of the op artist: anamorphic installations, dazzle graphics, plays on perspective, the production of complex, paradoxical space by manipulating parallel lines and waves and the clever deployment of chromatic tension are his forte.

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None of these more established names could claim to have had a better spring lockdown than No Signal, though. You couldn’t move for timeline debate around the station’s flagship show #NS10v10 which pitted artists like Skepta and Giggs and Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes against each other, with over 200,000 listening in and voting on Twitter as Wizkid took his clash with Vybz Kartel 10-0.

The team is over 40 volunteers deep, spanning producers and DJs to designers and social media managers all focused on the importance of keeping things fun and community-focused, not surprising given the Sonubi brothers’ history as promoters with their Recess parties. Education, information and entertainment are the three key pillars for the station who’ve labelled themselves as #blackradio, not shying away from supporting social causes like BLM and The Black Curriculum.

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The lush digital painting titled ‘Glasgow Tenement’ features a young woman seated at a tall, open sash window. She’s perched with one leg folded over the other, smoking a cigarette. It’s the colours as much as the composition that hint at this everyday solace being never-the-less a special time. Rich mustard walls, dark greens and purples, dusky blue sky outside and languorous plant life around her all suggest a moment of quiet calm. We sense the tranquil atmosphere and connect to a figure lost in her own thoughts.

Other portraits are brasher, equally enthralling but sometimes almost formidable. In the work titled ‘Jaconelli’s’ – the Scottish/Italian café famous for its fry-ups and ice cream – a womxn sits casually on the back of her booth seat, munching a chip and looking directly at the viewer as if to say, ‘This is me, taking up my space, get used to it!’ Again, striking hues compliment Hankinson’s unerringly bold design. The use of pattern and block colour conjures thoughts of Patrick Caulfield but spying the row of sweet jars in the background there’s wit and sense of place too. Anyone for a quarter of Soor Plums?

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The BUILDHOLLYWOOD family are hugely pleased that Robinson has agreed to our displaying two poems from his recent collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ (pub. by Peepal Tree Press) on the streets of the UK. This duo of strikingly designed posters is the latest Your Space Or Mine project which gives artists and creatives a platform on the street.

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So, along with other renowned artists who’ve made bold statements in the public domain – Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, the Guerrilla Girls – Wilde doesn’t mince words. Her infamous print ‘DADDY I WANT A FUCKING PONY’ being a case in point. The spoilt, petulant tone summons up Roald Dahl’s Veruca Salt character in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ while at the same time it addresses a privileged sense of entitlement, class iniquity, the patriarchy, consumerism… And it’s funny. Wilde’s wit speaks multiple truths. Which brings us to ‘DADDY I WANT TO PAINT A LOUSY MURAL IN SHOREDITCH!’. A riff on the snarky ‘I went to X and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’ trope, is the artist perchance suggesting East London’s good folk might be overly exposed to glib, sometimes even cynical art on walls? We’ll leave that to you Dear Reader.

The BUILDHOLLYWOOD family of JACK, JACK ARTS and DIABOLICAL has collaborated with curator Olly Walker to realise this work, the latest Your Space Or Mine project which gives artists and creatives a platform on the street. With Dr.D aka Subvertiser‘s vulpine support, Wilde has made her own ironic wish come true and created an apt and timely riposte to the role that some variations of street based art have played in the gentrification of our cities.

Calling for a more thoughtful approach regarding urban interventions Wilde has said ‘I want us to be more conscious of what we’re putting out there, who we are working for and with and the wider implications of what we do. And I want us to question the effect our creations have on local communities and their attitudes.’ Wilde’s ‘LOUSY MURAL’ for Your Space Or Mine evinces both ethical concern and a motivation to visually delight viewers. Bespoke, eye-catching communication that embraces germane placement, wit and a working moral compass: The BUILDHOLLYWOOD family’s ideal artist partner for sure.

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For our Your Space Or Mine series, we at BUILDHOLLYWOOD collaborated with Kaggwa to bring her message to the street via art in our billboard spaces in London, Bristol, Glasgow and Cardiff. Kaggwa’s piece began life as a mural painted in Deptford: “The lockdown restrictions in London at the time of conceiving this project were much stricter, and like many people, I was still spending a lot of time at home consuming hours of social media content following the wave of global civil rights protests,” says Kaggwa on the art’s origin.

“The resource sharing posts and images of crowds waving placards were alluding to a shift in consciousness, but it was only once I started seeing posters in people’s windows during walks around my local area that it began to feel like something tangible outside of my Instagram echo chamber was actually changing,” she adds. As more and more people who had previously been either “apathetic or ignorant to the systemic and institutional scale of racism” were waking up to it, Kaggwa felt a strong current of hope under her despair and exhaustion. She wanted to bring that feeling to others on a large scale, so asked her friend Naomi Edmondson, who runs legal street art project Survival Techniques to collaborate with her.

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Born, educated and bred in London, Myerscough is dedicated to enriching her local community. For the Design Museum, she created their first free permanent exhibition, featuring hand-picked selections from the museum’s archive. She transformed Battersea Power Station, a notoriously drab location, with a vivid piece entitled “POWER”. She has also worked further afield, transforming the children’s bedrooms at Sheffield Hospital into spaces that actively improve the patients’ wellbeing.

For our Your Space Or Mine collaboration with Myerscough, she’s created an artwork that will be displayed at our poster sites across the country. Reading “Sun Dance”, the vibrant posters spread the positivity that Myerscough is known for. As she puts it: “It is always time to dance.” To celebrate the launch, we interviewed Myerscough on her work:

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“I find myself drawn to the work of womxn artists which often speaks directly to my interests and concerns. At the same time, I continue to be surprised and saddened by the inequalities which perpetuate in the contemporary art world,” Neave said of the decision to launch her project. She was particularly motivated by a 2019 report from the Freelands Foundation that revealed that opportunities for women artists are increasing at a “painfully slow rate”.

Without money or connections, many marginalised voices cannot create or promote their art, but by commissioning new work, Ellipsis gives them the space to breathe. They also aim to further careers by allowing artists to expand their practice while providing visibility, sales, and support. Ellipsis currently exists online and in exhibitions in London, so we decided to collaborate with them for our Your Space Or Mine series, in which we offer artists poster space to spread their messaging.

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As the pandemic has closed many art galleries, the Molasses Gallery aims to bring this art to the public. Curator Tanaka Saburi says: “we believe we can spur philanthropy whilst educating the public with knowledge of often pigeonholed artists within our own city of London”. The inspiring project features works by emerging and established interdisciplinary artists of African and Caribbean heritage to coincide with renewed discussion around the role and recognition of Black artists in the creative industries.

Design-led by Nina Kunzendorf, the exhibition was inspired by a poem by New York artist Gordon Parks. Written in 1975, “To a Black Artist” remains ever-relevant today, and its influence is felt throughout the vibrant work that as Saburi says, features artists “with a multitude of different narratives that share one commonality,” conveying their own unique experiences through art.

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In 2001 she turned her avid, poetic and forensic gaze on a porn version of the Lewis Carroll classic. Banner’s Arsewoman in Wonderland screen printed in pink ink on a white billboard caused a stir when displayed at the Tate in 2002 but overall her practice elicits thoughtful, multi-layered engagement rather than ‘oo-er missus’ knee jerk reactions. Her ekphrastic transcriptions slow down perception, forcing viewers to apprehend sensation more deliberately, with an enhanced attention and self-awareness that viewing commercial productions rarely engenders.

Prose can seem transparent. While reading we discern ideas, feelings, scenarios but this act of decoding passes over or through the words so that once meanings have been gleaned the words evaporate. In Banner’s hands words, letters, even for single punctuation marks, it’s the physical form and material qualities that are bought to the fore.

In Buoys Boys (2016) the artist took full stops from five different typefaces and made them into large helium filled inflatables that bobbed around in the sky above the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. For another work Banner spent nearly 20 years collecting the entire back catalogue of Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft books. Titled 1909 – 2011, she displays the annuals as a four-metre tall stack. Transformed into a sculpture, all the detailed description and seductive design pertaining to more than a century of aviation is hidden from sight. Denied the geeky info and sexy pics we are encouraged instead to arrive at a more complex, ethical considerations as to the subject of planes and human flight.

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The latest artist to collaborate on the Your Space Or Mine street poster collaboration with the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family is Carleen de Sözer. Birmingham born but living and working in London for many years De Sözer’s practice spans tattoo design to street murals, works on canvas to CD covers, clothing to delivering numerous workshops for black women artists and young people. She’s both widely recognised and greatly admired for her figurative aerosol portraits often rendered in a classic black and golden yellow palette.

For the Your Space Or Mine street poster De Sözer has set aside her signature style and opted for a stark clenched fist design in primal colours: black, red and white. Gesture of anti-authoritarian collective resistance, the BPP focussed the symbolism of a clenched fist as a demand for black civil rights, an end to police brutality as well as the public policies and institutional practices that perpetuate injustice. She explains “I first designed this image after the London riots in 2011 it was initially meant to be a t-shirt print, the design was intentionally basic and bold and slightly miss quoted, changing the (a) to (the) to fit in the allocated space on the wrist. I wanted the image to look like it came from the 60’s, from the Black Panther Party. I took the quote from Black Panther leader Fred Hampton “you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution” I changed the quote to

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For a takeover in their city of Cardiff, Patternistas created an eye-catching, bold design that wouldn’t look out of place on a one-of-a-kind rug. With beaming sunshine faces, threads of colour and words reading, “kindness is catching, pass it on”, the work is bound to bring smiles to passing commuters and people on their errands. “We wanted to inject a sense of fun and spread some happy, shiny, sunny positivity at a time when so many people are feeling insecure and isolated,” says Suzanne of their intent.

The message, Suzanne feels, is the perfect antidote to “the general anxiety about catching or spreading the virus.” Plus, as many people are leaning on each other and their communities for help and support, we’re feeling the support of our local areas more than ever, and giving it back in equal servings. “It’s true that you can’t give kindness away – it will always come back to you in one form or another and the more kindness we experience the sunnier we feel,” says Suzanne, adding that they hope the image will “make people smile both on the streets and from behind their screens.”

Patternistas’ attraction to bold colours like those in the patterns of Singapore and Zambia shines through in this piece. The pair see patterns in everything, from puddles to trees to leaves. Suzanne adds that even we are patterns if you look closely enough, and “recognising that helps deepen our connection to one another and planet”. She says, too, that, “It’s always helpful to remember that we all have more in common than that which sets us apart but in the face of a global pandemic hopefully it’s at the forefront of all of our minds.”

Forever optimistic, Suzanne sees the positive in the pandemic: “most people are appreciating cleaner air and green spaces so we’re keeping hopeful that there will be lasting positives from these darker times.”

www.patternistas.co.uk

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‘The Sum of Us’, by poet Tony Walsh, is a powerful and thought-provoking new poem to bring the country back together as we begin to emerge from 12 weeks of lockdown, and show that collectively the sum of us is greater than its parts.

‘The Sum of Us’ has been commissioned by New Writing North, the writing development agency for the North of England.  We have collaborated with the talented design agency,  The Office of Craig Oldham, to create a site-specific display of the poem, running across 10 of our individually framed poster sites on Newton Street, in the heart of Manchester’s Northern Quarter.  The design has taken into consideration the clever use of language and play on mathematical terminology throughout, resulting in a design that utilises mathematical symbols to engage the passing views and create a visual flow across the ten posters

Watch ‘The Sum of Us’ here: https://newwritingnorth.com/tony-walsh-the-sum-of-us/

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All Social Recluse’s poster designs feature strong graphic linear representations set against subtle single colour backgrounds. In ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ the famous equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington has, of course, somewhat incongruous headgear. The ritual of crowning the Duke with a traffic cone epitomises Glaswegian’s anti-authoritarian spirit and irrepressible humour. The lyric derives from the 1985’ Simple Minds’ hit and is one of the most popular songs to come out of the city. “I wanted to get into people’s heads and talk to them,” the designer said.

The haunting refrain of ‘Oh Let Me Tell You That I Love You… That I Think About You All The Time’ from the song Caledonia is aptly paired with the silhouettes of famous Glasgow music venues. The sense of longing for home and family is palpable and reminds us how much we’re missing the sounds and companionship of attending gigs, concerts and communal singalongs.

Another famous Glasgow venue, the Barrowland Ballroom, sits beneath Jerry Rafferty and Joe Egan’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’. It’s a lyric that sums up the occasional despair of being cooped up inside with people we love but from time to time may feel we’ve seen quite enough. Obviously for Quentin Tarantino film fans it conjures up an altogether more disturbing instance of lockdown but maybe we’ll draw a veil over that one. Real life is shocking enough.

instagram.com/socialrecluse/

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Baillie is a graphic designer based in Edinburgh who currently works with cultural organisations like V&A Dundee, Glasgow Short Film Festival and Dundee Contemporary Arts. For the collaboration, he has created a bold, blue poster with bright yellow, green and pink block lettering reading “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things”. With a backdrop of images like cash registers, nurse’s uniforms and parcels, it highlights the necessary role that people from delivery workers to NHS staff to retail workers have played throughout the last few months. Plus, hopefully, it’ll help us to realise that their role is not yet over, even if we are allowed to go to the shops.

“Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things” is a fitting phrase to honour the way in which we have all worked towards safeguarding each other during the pandemic,” says Baillie of his design. As well as the visual references to key jobs, there are some more hidden nods to the various roles ordinary people have played: “The stitching line in the top-right corner of the design is a nod to the individuals and organisations who have given their time and resources to make scrubs and PPE, as well as the wider story of people all over the country who have been doing what they can to help, whether it be through volunteering or simply doing their very best to follow guidance and keep themselves and others safe.”

Even the colourful lettering designed and created by Baillie holds a deeper meaning and message: “The design also features bespoke type, with each letter built-up using geometric blocks, again alluding to the idea of people from different walks of life coming together.” We’ve had to all work together in recent months, helping out neighbours and friends with everyday tasks and keeping each other safe.

Baillie hopes that when ordinary people see the poster out in the streets (especially now they’re allowed out more regularly) it’ll “help to brighten up their day”. He wants to reinforce that everyone’s experience has been unique: “I imagine they’ll have their own examples of what the title “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things’ means to them.” While things are easing up, the fight for many ordinary people is not over, the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family will continue to use their street space to honour them and to offer bright messages of hope to the community.

martinbaillie.com

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Your Space Or Mine is a side project in which the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family offer its poster space to artists in cities across the UK to spread their positive messaging. Right now, it’s more important than ever – lots of people are lonely and in need of uplifting messages. Keen to bring positivity to the streets, Woollvin’s work will be on display in Sheffield.

Called “House Party”, the piece spreads warmth outside while reinforcing the possible magic of staying inside. In gentle but bright colours of pleasing turquoise, pink and yellow shades, the piece features fantastical scenes in a cutaway illustration of a house. It shows what’s possible if you only use your imagination: dancing cats, an octopus eating cake in the bath, and bears wrestling in the living room are among the fun images Woollvin chose to create.

Also available as a print with 25% of profits going to NHS Charities Together, Woollvin’s work breaks the idea that staying inside is boring. “The ‘Your Space Or Mine’ project allowed me to embrace the many ways households are managing isolation,” she says, adding, “Focusing on the small moments of joy we have found in our homes, whether you’re binge-watching tv, studying the stars or eating cake in the bath!”

Just like Woollvin’s other work, House Party is playful, but it carries deeper messages: “It enables me to spread positivity to the wider community,” she says.

www.bethanwoollvin.com

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Hearts, eyeballs, petals, teeth, smiles, worms, wedges, a grinning grey rat and fly agaric mushroom jostle around, behind, over and in between vertically arranged black letters that spell ‘Love’. Pink flicky drips, rocket powered bananas and those miniature mountains looking very fondly at one another. The whole shebang is a psychedelic, loony love-in.

Whitehouse observed how in Birmingham “All the places where I love to eat, drink and hang out with friends are sadly closing their doors. But despite the challenges I’ve seen so much compassion and support in our community… It reminds me how bloody brilliant this city is.”

In ‘Hope’ the smiling Mickey Mouse gloves make an appearance again, the rat wearing shades is there too but he’s pink this time. The word ‘Hope’ beams out amidst the mayhem in sunny yellow. The spatial playfulness in Whitehouse’s work is astonishing. If ‘Love’ has the feel of a freaky featured inferno, ‘Hope’ with its planets and spaceship reaches beyond the clouds to infinity.

Both works afford a joyful panacea to corona worries. The scramble of craziness also reminds us what happy gatherings used to be like. Whitehouse’s clever compositions let us imagine his visual cacophonies go beyond the frame, as if they are snapshots of some jubilant crowd on a beach, in the street, at a club. Meanwhile it’s a delight to lose yourself in these hypnotic, hallucinatory works. While we wait for the lovely days to return.

www.super-freak.co.uk

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‘Let’s Make This Love Normal’ and ‘Kindness At Its Proper Level’ are big-hearted thoughts… Purnell’s Your Space Or Mine COVID-19 collaboration with the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family is the latest in a long line of conscientious visual interventions on the urban environment. His Add Art project promotes likeminded designers’ and artists’ work. Selling Virtues is another initiative that seeks to critically examine the slew of unsettling messages and imagery we are often bombarded with in our towns and cities.

Purnell noted that “This pandemic has made clear we can’t maintain current lifestyles; if everything stops for just a few weeks, the effects are beyond comprehension. It has exposed to some, the need for family, to others the gift of community.”

In all three poster iterations hopeful and anticipatory phrases are broken into single words that range across bands of fuchsia pink and sap green, marigold orange, bumblebee yellow and clear sky blue. The minimal design – five bars of colour on a black ground – make Purnell’s heartfelt calls for fellow feeling all the more prominent.

Block black capitalised letters and no-frills kerning qualify the rainbow sentiment. Yes, the isolation, rigours and grief of past weeks, months have often bought out, demanded the best of people. But the stark design communicates an urgency: we cannot afford to lose sight of newfound acts of kindness, love and community. Neither must we forget the light these times have shone on social and occupational injustice.

There’s a lot of talk about things returning to ‘normal’, getting back to work, rebooting the economy… We’re not going back to normal. We will go forward to something else. We have to. Visual creatives with a conscience can perhaps help direct our future path, our future actions, so as to achieve post COVID-19 a fairer, kinder and more inclusive ‘Community Like Never Before’.

www.micahpurnell.com

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O’Hara works across different disciplines: mural painting, design, and illustration. She’s particularly fascinated by fluidity and bold colour combinations: “I’m interested in capturing the fluidity of an image in motion,” she says. At a time when many people are looking to feel uplifted and positive, work like O’Hara’s, with its flowing shapes and bright colours, is more necessary than ever.

Displayed on billboards across Brighton and Hove, her collaboration reads, “everything is an opportunity,” in her trademark wavy text against a background of bright, flowing pink, orange and blue shapes. It’s a reminder to use this time carefully, if you can, not just to reflect but to do things you really want to: start new hobbies and projects, or keep in touch with friends.

The billboard is a testament to O’Hara’s optimism: “For me it’s important that I try and find something positive in every bad situation, perhaps something that I have learnt,” she tells us. The intention with her work is always to uplift, and on a large scale like this, it’s even easier to bring joy to many. “During this time, I think it’s particularly important that I do this with my work, in any way I can, which makes this the perfect collaboration,” she says, adding: “I wanted to create something bold and clear. Almost a strip back of what I usually do, whilst still keeping it in style.”

O’Hara’s positive, playful outlook on life feeds into her work’s ethos, making her projects, which are often on large scales, uplifting. She’s transformed many outdoor spaces, from walls to basketball courts, and her work with us is powerful, with a simple goal: “I want people to walk by and feel positively powerful and uplifted.”

www.loisohara.co.uk

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The #medicineonthewall collaboration between Dr John Lee of Bristol University’s iBA programme in Medical Humanities and the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (aka the ‘PRSC’ who, from 2007, have been at the forefront of defending public spaces, cultural freedoms and promoting alternative voices across the city) brings together local graffiti writers and street artists – including Ryder, Decay, Uncredited, 3dom and Sepr – to prescribe ‘Graphic Medicine’ on urban walls.

Lee explains, “#medicineonthewalls resists the notion of a standard patient with a standard disease, it tries to make an emotional engagement with medicine and health, reaching out to diverse publics in ways that can outpace official channels of communication.”

What’s a progressive healthcare initiative and radical activist enterprise doing teaming up with the epitome of commerce: a creative out-of-home agency family? That said, over the years the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family has fine form when it comes to enlightened partnerships supporting ethical, community driven projects. And this #medicineonthewalls Your Space Or Mine collaboration with BUILDHOLLYWOOD is another great example.

So, because not everyone has a home in which to shelter, the phrase ‘Stay In’ appears on boards across town. In place of getting names up, occupying risky territory, for the time being #medicineonthewalls has bought counterculture in from the cold. Dynamic, dripping, shattered scripts that usually occupy brickwork, bridges, trains or highpoints in the townscape, have given voice, generously lent their spraycan banditry, to a cause that has everyone’s well-being at heart.

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In ‘Staying Apart, Always Together’ we see set against a rising sun the silhouette of two figures standing apart. Their shadows, however, are holding hands like a couple, like friends or family. Pre-quarantine this poster might’ve seemed a tad saccharine but its clear message and tender sentiment will be seen by many passers-by as pretty heart-warming right now.

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The BUILDHOLLYWOOD family have teamed up with Ilori to bring his trademark colour to the street yet again with their Your Space Or Mine project. With a message of “better days are coming, I promise” in 70s-style text against a vibrant backdrop of orange, blue, green pink and yellow, the poster is both uplifting and meaningful.

The piece will be on view in our poster site in Blackfriars, taking inspiration from the sketches for the new A&E department at Westminster Hospital, which Ilori will also be designing. The project is in collaboration with charity CW+, the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Kensington and Chelsea Art Week, who are creating temporary installations in West London.

Speaking about the thought process behind his work, Ilori told us that, “‘better days are coming, I promise’ is a message that I have been singing to myself and loved ones during the pandemic.” He added: “The message has been my therapist during these tough times and has given me hope when sometimes I feel like this will never come to an end.” The news right now is often distressing and painful, but Ilori wants us to take away positive thoughts from our current situation.

“The NHS staff are working to save people’s lives and I can’t imagine what it feel like for them. They must be also struggling to feel like better days are coming, but sometimes we all need a reminder that they are.” Ilori hopes that his work will contribute to the good mood of both NHS staff and regular people as they go about their routines: “I want the artwork to give people a sense of hope and provide them with joy, bringing them some comfort where they may feel pain and uncertainty.”

He adds, “I pray that when people walk past or look at my message on the streets of London It uplifts their soul and spirit because we are in this together.” We are proud to work with Ilori on this important project – we need uplifting words and images right now, and Ilori’s work is always bound to inspire.

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After two months of our lives slowing down, we’re all finding creative ways to enjoy our new routines and find space to get inspired. To help drive your inspiration, the BUILDHOLLYWOOD family of JACK, JACK ARTS and DIABOLICAL have collaborated with famous street artist Ben Eine to bring his tongue-in-cheek messages to our streets.

Born in London, Eine is one of the most successful letterform artists in the world and is regarded as a pioneer in the exploration of contemporary typography art. Originally a graffiti writer, Eine started his career over 30 years ago, leaving his first tag all over London before developing his distinct typographic style. Eine began painting huge, bright and colourful letters on shutters all over East London that caught the public’s attention and were seminal in the rise of street art’s popularity. Ben designed his most impressive work to date in 2018, a mural simply reading “CREATE”. The piece, which is the largest street art in the world, took up 17500 feet in his stomping ground of East London and could be seen from space. London based but his works are celebrated worldwide – from innumerous streets, to high end boutiques and even the White House.

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Working across a variety of mediums, Philip’s work is bright, eye-catching and modern, which made it ideal for our latest poster collaborations. Intending to bring positivity and light to dark days and dark streets, we wanted to work with Philip to create a series of posters for display across Cardiff.

The pieces, which show bright red hands forming a heart shape, read “God Bless the NHS” in blue lettering. The message is simple, designed to inspire, disrupt, and hopefully bring some much-needed hope to the thousands of health workers trekking to work in cities every day.

Philip wanted to acknowledge the hard work of not just doctors and nurses, but everyone working on the front lines to care for COVID-19 patients and other people every single day: “There are some amazing people working on the frontline right now, and not just all the wonderful doctors and nurses putting their lives at risk, but all the carers, shop workers, bus drivers, delivery drivers. all doing a fantastic job. You make us all very proud.” he says of the work.

Philip’s pieces, which are visible on our poster sites in Cardiff, are a reminder of the life-risking work that those people are undertaking every single day just to keep us safe.

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Recognising this hypocrisy, artist Craig Oldham wanted to respond to Patel’s comments and the current situation with art. The agency family approached him to put out positive messages on its poster sites in Manchester, Oldham created a bright, colourful piece, which in large, bold lettering, reads: “may they never be deemed low-skilled again”. The text is set against the backdrop of a list of “low-skilled”, now key workers: teachers, warehouse coordinators and therapy professionals to name a few. It spotlights the people that we’ve often not only dismissed in society, but whose massive importance has now been recognised.

Speaking to Design Week recently, Oldham elaborated on his motivations for creating the poster: “It has taken a global pandemic for the government to recognise the value of all of its citizens and workforces. In only February of this year, Patel’s comments and, more to the point, the government’s policy on what determines a person’s ‘value’, are ridiculous.”

Oldham calls this particular form of hypocrisy “snobbery”, noting that the key workers’ input has always been integral to this country. “These workers clean, care, and deliver for this country, and they always have, global pandemic or not, so to suddenly switch just because they are now propping us all up as a nation and you’ve realised how important they are made me a little angry.”

While the work was born partly from Oldham’s anger, he says he wants it to serve as a positive show of solidarity with “all of those people continuing to work despite the crisis, supporting, caring, cleaning, delivering for every single one of us.” He points to the designs that ordinary people are spreading across the country as a symbol of the ways in which creativity is helping us through the crisis: the rainbows in support of the NHS that adorn every street in the form of paint, crayon, paper and collage, intended to uplift key workers.

“These rainbows are probably the result of trying to keep the kids entertained in tough times for families, but they’re also a creative gesture, symbolic of communities reaching out to one another with a promise of hope and better times on the horizon. That’s a real, powerful, graphic symbol, that fulfils a role of community and connectivity probably more so than any polished poster could.” he says. Above all, Oldham hopes that this pandemic will enforce what we now know to be true: that these workers didn’t become important overnight: “They always have been, and will continue to be, Key Workers.”

Download the prints here

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Artist Mark Titchner, whose bold work often features on billboards, buildings and other public spaces, has produced some stunning artwork for our collaboration. Mark wants to offer hope and boost our morale through his colourful posters which are up in 10 cities across the UK. With many of us only leaving the house for our daily errands and exercise, the bright, uplifting pieces are an antidote to the monotony we are all facing.

Reading “PLEASE BELIEVE THESE DAYS WILL PASS”, the bright work is a rallying cry for hope that disrupts the urban environment. It’s likely that Mark’s latest work will be seen more on social media than on the street, something that’s different for someone who so often works in the public sphere, but however you see it, we hope that it will reach the people who need the message the most.

As part of our collaboration we have made the poster artwork downloadable so that you can help spread the message too. Print them out and display them in your window.

Download the poster here

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Montgomery has been called a vandal, a street artist, a post-situationist, a punk artist and the text-art Banksy. His work puts poetry in front of ordinary people in eye-catching visual formats, taking the written word to the most physical of spaces. The collaboration saw Montgomery takeover five of our major sites in East London, responding to these spaces by creating a series of poems using his signature style.

The poems were lyrical, dreamy and almost optimistic, covering the themes of modernism, racial and gender equality, immigration, love and hope, as well as strong statements against Donald Trump’s denial of climate change. Montgomery and urban explorer Niall McDevitt also lead an up close and personal walking tour of the Billboard Poems focusing on the poetry itself as well as the surrounding location.

“I started doing billboard works in Shoreditch in 2004 as my own protest against the Iraq War, and doing billboards in Shoreditch formed the backbone of my work throughout the 2000s. I no longer live in the neighbourhood, it’s too expensive for artists now, but being invited back by Jack is thrilling as I’m getting to take over whole streets where I used to live. It’s letting me work across multiple billboards and look at each street as a giant graphic poem and experiment much more with the visual aspects of the work. I’m thinking of them as concrete poems really with the billboard as the page and pushing the graphic elements more than I’ve been able to before.” – Robert Montgomery.

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At first sight Mustafa Hulusi’s recent work Pomegranate (2014) appearing on hoardings around East London, strikes a nostalgic note. To feel a clump of rotting fruit caught between heel and sole, causing that awkward public leg hobble or, if really unfortunate, a slithering pratfall was once not an altogether uncommon experience.

These days, with London’s more sanitised, regulated urbanism (and all those plastic bowls I suppose), ground-level flora is a much less common squelch. You could even be forgiven for thinking we live in a cleaner, safer city. Well, perhaps we do but Hulusi’s sumptuous and cloying images of mythical putrescence suggest this isn’t everyone’s experience. Elsewhere humankind, Hulusi would argue Humanism and perhaps the Enlightenment project itself, is drowning in rottenness.

The global food industry systematically ensures 30 to 40% of all food grown in the world is thrown away as waste in order to ‘stabilize’ prices and therefore profits.

I met the artist in Hoxton and over a suitably twatish pomegranate cocktail we chatted about his billboard project. Hulusi talks persuasively of the links between outdoor advertising or more specifically posters on hoardings, his chosen medium and the subject of his current project. Not just in terms of waste generated but that of a geographical media being subsumed by the digitalisation of the 21st century. A shift from collective to individualised communication and also how this affords advertisers a more coercive and insidious sales tool. A necrosis bound up with Neo-Liberalism and Capitalism.

The poster as rotting fruit and vice versa is an anti-‘always switched on’ gesture, maybe melancholic like Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’, signifying the ending of one age and the beginning of another.

More specifically, gigantic and incongruous mememto mori, these are Cypriot pomegranates slumping and spoiling. We can smell almost, the airless funk, witness the tragic irreversibility of decay. The artist cites parallels between a decadent state, an island divided where both sides are ruled by elites propped up by warring world interests, and a perpetual war being the adjunct of Capital’s myopic conceit: that the only way ahead is ever increased production and consumption.

Across the globe and in the streets of one of the world’s richest cities, there is the sickening stench of tax avoidance, of profits benefiting only those at the very top of the tree. Hulusi argues this image, a gift moldering, references a waste of human potential, cipher for Capitalism’s boot pressed firmly on the face of the world’s poor. This might not be an obvious reading, for many passers-by in East London it’s not an uncommon experience. While economic austerity spurs on UKIP’s fetid, dangerous and popularist banalities, a moribund, craven Socialism as peddled by new Old (just as bad as the old New) Labour offers very little in the way of a credible response to the Lib Con diet of making sure the rich keep an ever tightening hold on the fruits of other people’s toil.

As an art lecturer I am impressed when a creative person realises a work that seeks to inject some hope into the cityscape. If optimism isn’t the prerogative of the young then surely we’re lost. I am less enamoured of a new breed of up and coming artists who peddle the illusion of a rising communitarianism from the safety of a privileged bubble, be it fashion / artworld crossovers or corporate / artworld collaborations. It seems there’s even a few who would have us believe that optimism is a duty. Are they blind or do they just have a trust fund?

In this photographic reminder of transience and fragility, I would argue Hulusi’s thinking has taken a significant turn. He is no longer, as with a previous series, singing the praises of The Joyous, Wonderful and Shining Age. And, to be honest, whilst they were lush, striking paintings, if the title of that series didn’t contain any hint of irony I always thought they could be mistaken for utopian-realist agit prop. With Pomegranate, whilst there is still a beauty of sorts, Hulusi’s fallen fruit sits in grey dusty soil resembling the contents of a funereal urn. A gift of the earth has been neglected, left to rot. A situation that currently chimes with peoples the world over.

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