The StreetSurfaces project started in 2009 as my response to the 'Word on the Street' photographic competition run by the Royal College of Art.
I didn't get accepted on this occasion, however the concept behind my application became sufficiently intriguing for me to continue to research this aspect of the urban environment.
Many photographers have observed graffiti on walls and other vertical surfaces but the road and pavements have been sadly neglected. It was not just the observations that I thought contained possibilities but also the potential for narratives, indeed meta-narratives, that went with them.
This period, leading up to and beyond 2009, coincided with extensive road works throughout London. Firstly with the replacement of the Victorian water mains but also works associated with traffic restrictions and decorative extensions to the pavements.
As my day job has been as the milkman for London's South Bank and Bankside areas, I decided to channel the frustrations I experienced from these delays and work-arounds into this project.
To read about the my history as an artist / milkman.
click here to see the article that appeared in Bettery Magazine Jan 2014
How we interpret these lexicons of the pedestrian is important to the vitality with which we traverse the urban environment. Some would say this is all there is. Visitors to this site however, may well prefer to suspend adherence to such creeds and approach the field with a more skeptical and empirical methodology.
On one side there is the bricks and mortar reality of the physical structures, the buildings, drainage systems, utilities, etc. and the flows of metaphorical mind-space that inhabit this theatre. Some have called this Cloud 'linear threads attached to persona' and there is a great deal of substance to this interpretation.
But this is by no means the whole story...