Art On The Streets Of Croydon

February 7, 2024 Matt Bannister

My paintings have been blown up (onto banners) as part of a town-wide art installation in central Croydon.

Three designs of lamp-post banners - featuring slices of my paintings ‘February’, ‘People’ and ‘Night Flowers’ are now hanging up and repeated on the High Street and elsewhere in Croydon. Alongside them are some other really bright, eye-catching works on banners by local creatives Miguel Sopena, Divya Sharma, Skye Baker and Melanie Russell. The Creative Croydon initiative set up by Croydon BID has returned to Croydon town centre this Winter creating an open-air art gallery for people to enjoy.

Thanks so much to Julia at 31% Wool and the Check Out Croydon team for making this happen. Thanks to Glenn Foster for taking these photographs, too. The whole display of work is up until April 2024.

For more background to the project visit Croydonist.

All the artists’ works appearing in the outdoor ‘exhibition’.

Pyracantha berry miniature

January 16, 2023 Matt Bannister

Here’s a miniature painting I did recently as a present for someone. Pyracantha berries in acrylic on cardboard in a homemade little cardboard float frame. I picked the berries myself, and lit them as a still life. In order to get the composition perfect I framed them using my phone so I knew exactly where the lines and negative spaces would fit in the rectangle. I’ve no plans to go any smaller, though, as doing this piece made my eyes itch!

East Bridge House (Turn Left) - the story

December 6, 2022 Matt Bannister

My painting ‘East Bridge House (Turn Left)’ started off as an artwork inspired by a dramatic urban view. As I learnt more about the location, I discovered a story hidden beneath the Croydon tarmac.

**East Bridge House (Turn Left)**. 2021. Acrylic on wood panel. 61cm x 61cm.

The painting was inspired by a view from the Croydon tower block known by many different names, including The 50p Building, No.1 Croydon, The Thrupenny Bit Building and the NLA Tower. The area shown in the painting was originally the site of an old building called East Bridge House (and this gave me the title for the work). The owners refused to sell up when the modern block was proposed, but the tower was constructed looming above them anyway. Eventually, East Bridge House fell empty and was demolished.

Writer John Grindrod says:

In the heart of suburban Surrey sits the NLA Tower, now known as No.1 Croydon. It was designed, like hundreds of others, in Seifert’s vast draughtsmans’ office. In the original 1964 plans it was set to be, in the fashion of the day, a tower sat atop a podium. But when it came to construction things didn’t turn out quite that straightforward. East Bridge House, a solicitor’s office, sat on part of the site that the podium block was due to occupy, and the owner wasn’t willing to move. Lengthy legal wrangling ensued, but in the end construction had to start without a resolution, and so the podium was scrapped. Instead the NLA Tower became a free-standing block, albeit nestling next to East Bridge House. The tower emerges from the rough concrete volcano-mouth of an underground car park, like a Thunderbirds rocket caught mid-launch. East Bridge House, that pesky neighbour, was finally demolished in 1973, three years after construction had finished, and at last the tower could shrug off accusations that it was yet another suburban semi.
Quote taken from ‘NLA Tower, Croydon’ by John Grindrod published on the Twentieth Century Society website, November 2014. www.c20society.org.uk

With the help of Twitter, Turf Projects and the Museum of Croydon, I’ve managed to find some photos of plucky little East Bridge House.

From a painter’s point of view, I began working on this using just black, greys and white acrylic paint, with a plan to add colours and coloured glazes later on.

I masked off the ‘islands’ of grass and pavement, leaving me the tarmac areas free to spray with paint from brushes (and toothbrushes) to give it a gravelly texture.

Stage one of adding colour glazes. I’ve painted the shadows first, with the objects casting them still to come on top later.

Prints of the finished painting can be purchased via my Etsy store here.

Spread - An Exhibition of Work by Turf Studio Members

May 4, 2022 Matt Bannister

A poster advertising the art exhibition 'Spread'. Spread is written in a pale yellow and seems to have been poured across the poster.

‘Spread’ - An exhibition of work by Turf Studio members runs from 25th-28th May 2022 in the Turf Project Space (part of Turf Projects, 46-47 Trinity Court, Whitgift Centre, Croydon, CR0 1UQ). Opening times: 11am-5pm. Closing event Saturday 28th May: 2pm-5pm.

Featuring the work of Matt Bannister, Asha Fontenelle, Flora Hunt, Salina Jane, Desilver Johnson, Jhinuk Sarkar, Divya Sharma, Yolanda Shields, Katherine Smith, Miguel Sopena, Amy J Wilson and Daisy Young.

Audio description of the exhibition ‘Spread’ at the Turf Project Space.

Painting by Matt Bannister of a sunset through Winter trees. In the foreground are two structures of wood with a glowing sphere of light between them. — ‘Placeholder’, 2022. By Matt Bannister. Acrylic and graphite on canvas. Unframed dimensions: 40cm x 50cm.

detail 1

detail 2

detail 3

I’ve got some thoughts about the work here. It’s more of a stream of notes, really, and I don’t want to spell it all out but it might give you an idea of my approach to creating the final painting:

PLACEHOLDER
The beauty of a sunset. The silhouettes of bare trees like nature’s own charcoal drawings. Space. Energy. Life. The dramatic and otherworldly effects of sunsets that still stun me. Time. Wonder from the familiar - a theatrical dusk in a local park. The wooden cube structures as figures, as 3D drawings, as illustrations of fragile human endeavour. As wild growth contained. Dead wood. Living trees. The handmade nature of all human efforts. Straight lines never stay straight. Creating a new scene from my thoughts. Temporary. Humans. Games. Stillness. Potential. Interaction. Influences - Magritte, Victor Willing, Cornelia Parker.

Shared Spaces - process and construction

June 19, 2020 Matt Bannister

'Shared Spaces' is a piece I made at the end of last year, but I have only recently framed and documented it. To be honest, it was a bit of an experiment using different materials, and a slight departure from my normally detailed paintings. It's inspired by silhouettes on the skyline and the juxtaposing of natural vs. manmade structures. The reflective materials are normally used in the manufacture of protective clothing. I've employed them here to echo the barriers, warnings, incidents, protections, and safety measures of modern life.

Acrylic paint sketches were made initially of the trees, insects and cranes, working from reference photos.

I began making the squares and rectangles by covering pieces of wood with the different reflective materials, effectively stretching mini pieces of canvas over each block.

Once I had all the three dimensional elements, I began finessing how I wanted them to be arranged together.

I tried to get the composition so that the different surfaces were as diverse as possible, and not have the same colours too close to each other.

The images of the insects, cranes and trees were transferred on to each surface using pencil. I then carefully painted over these using gloss acrylic paint. This is an image of a churchyard beetle.

The trees were all drawn from photos I had taken locally. The insects are all native species to the UK. Shown here is an earwig and an ant.

As each drawing was completed, the elements began to accumulate.

I had to secure everything together on the back, using screws and hardboard. The final piece is fairly heavy, as each square and rectangle is solid, not a canvas on a frame. The construction over all is a little haphazard and not as slick as I’d hop… — I had to secure everything together on the back, using screws and hardboard. The final piece is fairly heavy, as each square and rectangle is solid, not a canvas on a frame. The construction over all is a little haphazard and not as slick as I’d hoped, but hey - it was always and experiment. I’d like to explore working with more reflective surfaces in the future, though.

I’ve included here a link to a video showing how the artwork looks under varying light sources. This shows how the different materials respond, something not conveyed really by a still image.