A huge thank you to everyone who came to see The Poor Door Exhibition at A-side B-side Gallery

Thank you to everyone who came to see The Poor Door Exhibition at A-side B-side Gallery, it was a great turn out at the opening night!

For the first two weeks in October, A-side B-side Gallery was filled with the work of 11 artists making work in response to the Housing Crisis.  Lots of people popped in for a chat and to share their stories relating to what is happening.  

London Live came to talk to us at the opening, the exhibition was also reviewed by the talented Louis Staples for Dazed, and featured in the East End Review who described it as 'a mini-Dismaland' !!?

Thanks so much to all the artists who participated:

Alison Berry, Rebecca Byrne, Mikey Georgeson, Mars Gomes, Kin, Lee Maelzer, Reena Makwana, S.P.A.R (Society for the preservation of admirable rubble featuring Brian Guest courtesy of Calum F Kerr), Tom Rizzuto, Julia Russell

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We also held a film night at the gallery and featured: 

Estate, A Reverie (by Fugitive Images)

Better than Spikes

Focus E15 Campaign

Key Money (by Horrible Karate Massacre Films)

If you didn't make it to the show, here are some pictures:

'Help Duvet' by Mars Gomes

'Portals' by Rebecca Byrne

'Yellow Curtain' by Lee Maelzer

'Old Sink' by Julia Russell

'The Lost Estate' by Mikey Georgeson

The S.P.A.R set up... Brian Guest made appearances on a couple of occasions throughout the run of the show.  Visitors to the show made drawings of rubble which you can see displayed here.

'Dead Pigeons and Chandeliers' and 'Terminal Decline' by Kin

'NowHere' by Reena Makwana

'The Tower' by Alison Berry

'Shame on You' by Mars Gomes

'Pricey' and 'We Want Loads of Dosh' 

Two of the signs from my REAL Estate Agent Signs series

'We Want Loads of Dosh' (detail)

Brian Guest of S.P.A.R chats to people about rubble on the opening night

'Priced Out' (by me!)

Being interviewed by London Live

'Help Duvet' (detail) by Mars Gomes

Thanks again to everyone, 'The Poor Door' exhibition is something I had wanted to do for a long time.  Via an open call, it was great to find so many brilliant artists making work and responding in different ways to the housing crisis and rising rents in London.

I would LOVE to continue with this idea and involve more artists in another bigger more ambitious exhibition on this subject in the future.  We shall see!

The exhibition was part of Art Licks Weekend, 'a festival that showcases the work of pioneering young artists, curators, galleries and project spaces in London'.  The show was shortlisted for the Artquest Work Week Prize.

The exhibition also raised money for the charity Shelter

Housing crisis protest signs

I started making artwork about the housing crisis in London in 2012.  Since then people have often shared their stories with me, recounting how their lives have been affected by the phenomenal and rapid increase of the cost of rent in the capital.  People are struggling to make ends meet, many are being priced out, whole communities are being marginalised and edged out of London.

For a long time I wasn't sure what to do with the stories, I just collected them.  But eventually I decided that I needed to start incorporating them into the work itself, as a way of documenting and communicating the housing issues that so many people are currently facing.  

For a long time I had been thinking about estate agent signs and how they sprout up like weeds in London.  Because the housing market is strong at the moment, flats and houses sell quickly and can be rented out within a few hours.  However there are signs advertising properties 'For Sale' and 'To Let' littering and intruding every street, their familiar colours and branding becoming a part of our surroundings.  These signs stay outside for months on end even though the houses and flats were let or sold within a few days. 

Each 'For Sale' sign symbolises money and a financial transaction, but each one also tells a human story.  The family who could no longer afford the rent when the landlord increased it by another £600 per month, so were forced to move away and take their kids away from the school where they were settled. The person whose entire monthly income goes into their landlords pocket, yet that landlord won't make any repairs.

So I started making my own versions of the signs, replacing the text with the stories and real experiences that people had shared with me.  They are a bit like protest signs I suppose, and I want them to tell the truth.

Each sign is a unique painting over a 2-3 colour screen print, which was printed directly onto existing found estate agent signs.  I've made 25 of these signs so far and I want to make more, so if you have a story to share please let me know.

This body of work was created for Banksy's Bemusement Park: Dismaland in Weston-Super-Mare.

A selection of these signs will also be on show at The Poor Door, a collective exhibition about the housing crisis, opening at A-side B-side Gallery on 1st October. 

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I did the screen printing at Atom Gallery on Stroud Green Road, with guidance and expertise from master screen printer Mark Perronet (thank you Mark!)

The photographs are by the very talented Lady Ray, you can see more of her work here: lrcphotography.co.uk