Location Project- Rose tinted Glasses.

 I decided to do my location project on the current place I live since I moved to Londn from university. I lived in Manor Park for a year and now have lived in Forest Gate for just over a year. Whilst researching online my local area I found these lovely things because have to say about my new town.

"Manor Park. A s**thole that is so wretched, it even makes Forest Gate seem charming."


"The place abounds with shambling losers, wastes, the aged and the dumb – and broken-english speaking refugees and dodgers of every race, colour and creed. A hovel and a ghetto at the same time. Failure hangs over the place so heavily you can taste it. Everyone else tastes it too, judging by the big gobbets of phlegm you can see gobbed out on the pavement every ten paces – the different colours inside of it are something to look, I suppose: street art."

"Pound shops and take-aways are what there are plenty of – they almost outnumber the benefit-scroungers that populated the dump."




Baring in mind I moved from a small Roman town where i'm used to knowing everybody who walks past me on the street, it's safe to say i've had to adapt a little bit to this environment. Anyway i have always been one to make the best of a bad situation, my rent is cheap and it gave me inspiration for this project.

 

Here are some photographs you can see of my local area. The first three are typical East London, I cant walk more than 50 metres without seeing mattresses on the floor. The flats/tower blocks are absolutly filled with people, foreign families in fact most houses are. The trainers hanging on the power lines mean you can buy crack here and most peoples houses are overgrown and completely filthy. I decided to edit the pictures for more of a pretty summer vibe, they're still the same photos but with just different colours.

For my final print I decided to do a Photocopy transfer of different houses on my road so its a long print of my street. I then put a white van at the end. A white van for me personally symbolises, well... a dodgy person? I then screen printed over my photocopy transfer some illustrations i did to brighten the whole picture up. Theres kids holding balloons. I have turned the pedophile van into an ice cream van and drawn some cute woodland creatures to brighten up gloomy Forest Gate. Although I spent a while on the illustrations I actually prefer the original one without the illustrations. The grey gloomy feeling it gives ad the way the van is at the end on the right is very abrupt and creepy.