Greenwich Peninsula: Art on Hoarding
Greenwich Peninsula: In the Same Place, Faisal Abdu’Allah
Year
2008-9
Client
Arts Council England
London Borough Greenwich
Greenwich Peninsula (Lend Lease / Quintain JV) Greenwich Millennium Village (Countryside / Taylor Wimpey JV)
GLA (formerly Homes & Communities Agency)
Artist
Faisal Abdu’Allah
Service
Commission Management
Collaborator
Vivienne Reiss
Funding
The National Lottery via Arts Council England
Location
Greenwich Peninsula,
North Greenwich, London
A temporary artwork for the hoarding at Greenwich Peninsula
The brief was to work collaboratively with local residents and workers in the creation of the artwork for the site. The intention being that the creative process would assist in developing links between the diverse communities on the peninsula, thereby strengthening their connection with and understanding of each other and the place they live. The Faisal met with a range of individuals and organisations across the Peninsula.
In the same place
Faisal Abdu’Allah’s concept is based on the idea of local stories and where he becomes a conduit for the expression of a range of commentaries by local people. The starting point for his engagement with participants is the same, he asks everyone: ‘If there was a fire what object would you save’?
The final artwork was based on conversations with a range of people, including quotes by Penny Wright, the then Assistant Manager of the Pilot Inn and Brian Roberts, former Site Manager. The central panel was a poem by Lichtenstein Class 3 at Millennium Primary School produced with the writer Sarah Butler, created as part of the project Almost an Island?
Faisal described the artwork, a 6m structure with texts that lit up at dusk as a ’box of thoughts’. The light box was produced with Interactive Imagination, it also responded to movement and lit up as people passed by.
“I think it’s great, I really do. It made me stop and it made me think a little bit about where we live and how much I appreciate it.”
Art on Hoarding was conceived as an on-going programme. This was intended as the first phase of the initiative and it involved commissioning two site-specific art works for hoarding at the Greenwich Peninsula.
An associated education programme - two artist residencies in Millennium and John Roan Schools were also planned to take place.
“The art programme has provided a point of connection, it makes all the individual things that go on here into a bigger entity. It gives a backbone to hang ideas from and knit together a common project. If you live in the village and you are not part of the school, now you will know about it because you can read the children’s poem on the hoarding.”
Faisal Abdu’Allah is an internationally acclaimed British artist and barber who creates iconographic imagery of power, race, masculinity, violence, and faith to challenge the values and ideologies we attach to those images and to interrogate the historic and cultural contexts in which they originate.
Faisal Abdu’Allah’s work primarily evolves from the interface of photography, the printed image and lens-based installations. He graduated in Fine Arts at the Royal College of Art in London. Abdu’Allah appropriates iconography from popular culture to constantly reposition values and ideologies pertaining to representation.