Outdoors Panel on Anerley Road,
Crystal Palace, London
Framed painting hanging on a street wall on Anerley road, Crystal Palace, commissioned by the Anerly Rejuvenation Project..
A framed acrylic painting hanging on a strret wall, commissioned by the Anerley Rejuvenation Project. This project, supported by the Bromley Coucil, a community based initiative, that launched the recuperation and rejuvenation of the shopping parade in Anerley road, Crystal Palace. A heritage mural was in need for a street that was once vibrantly busy and lived through an array of historical events, namely the catastrophic collapse of the Crystal Palace in 1936.
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Following the success of the exhibition, the palace was moved and reconstructed in 1854 in a modified and enlarged form in the grounds of the Penge Place estate at Sydenham Hill. The buildings housed the Crystal Palace School of Art, Science, and Literature and Crystal Palace School of Engineering. It attracted visitors for over seven decades.
Adjacent to this road are very important urban landmarks, such as the newly reopened and restored Crystal Palace train station, the Crystal Palace National Sports centre and the Park, where life sized sculptures Dinosaurs and other extinct species. These were the first Dinossaur sculptures in the world, predating Charles Darwin publication "On the Origin of Species".
A painting, just like the ones that can be seen in any old London Pub, framed and hanging on a wall, on the street. Aesthetics are awkward: a collage of old vintage postcards, coloured black and white photography, image props of people and situations from different decades all conjure in one image - what is, what was and what it can be that place on Anerley road.
The location, a small facade of a building that no longer stands, just next door to the local Ice-cream shop and adjacent to the canal bridge, has the exact same viewpoint of an old postcard of Anerley road in the 1920's.
This was the starting point to build a little framed window, with a view to the past, present and future of the place.
Process
Depicting the view up Anerley Hill from 1898 all the way through to 2013, it features several references to the rich history of this road, namely the Crystal Palace building and one of its water towers on the skyline; an airship in the sky above; Edwardian cyclists from the Anerley Bicycle Club, founded in 1881; 1860s to 1920s Crystal Palace visitors alongside contemporary local people, including several traders and shopkeepers; the Crystal Palace stationmaster; and the neighbourhood’s Big Issue seller. In the foreground, children of today are playing with toy dinosaurs, referencing the famous life-size statues still present in Crystal Palace Park. Buildings shown in black and white no longer stand today, whereas those in colour have survived.
This was a two way research process into the characters of the compressed storyboard of Crystal Palace's Anerley Road.
Compiling historical information from published sources, old photographs and postcards, along with information provided by the Crystal Palace Museum, that is also set on Anerley Road and interviewing and photographing several locals that live and work in the area.
Contemporary story characters: The father and son walking to the park, the Ic-ecream shop owner, the local vintage hairdresser, the local coffee shop workers, the train station manager, and the "Big Issue" seller, all kindly posed for this work, on location, going about their daily routines.
existing old boar on 69 Anerley road, by the bus stop
preliminary sketching
Crystal Palace station
existing old boar on 69 Anerley road, by the bus stop
A maritime plywood board was mounted and painted on a specially set workshop inside the Crystal Palace Train Station with the support of Anerley road Rejuvenation Programme.