Bevels, bypasses
‘Bevels, bypasses’ is a recently completed site specific commission — in collaboration with writer-editor Bryony Quinn — for Turf Projects, a publicly funded (Arts Council England, Croydon Council) artist-run contemporary art space based in Croydon, South-East London. The project is also featured in Failed States journal (Issue no.2 – suburb), recently launched at Strange Perfume LGBTQIA book fair, South London Gallery.
The following text is taken from a feature on Turf’s website; documentation photographs by Tim Bowditch.
Bevels, Bypasses
Peter Nencini & Bryony Quinn
UV-printed ceramic tiles, Lasercut perspex modular typeforms
Each glyph that makes up a sign takes its form from architectural or accidental details in Croydon’s built up and built over centre. Bevels, bypasses, buttresses, struts, quoins: the letterforms have been set in a way that is less about harmonious placement and more about the available space – a technique shared by the area’s town planners and those who patch up the roads and pavements. The words, too, have been lifted from the immediate textual environment of road signs, ads and local newspapers of Croydon, and from the town’s archive of surveys, maps and meeting minutes. The terms and letterforms are euphonic and strange when isolated or set in simple combinations: ‘Saffron’ and ‘Sofa’, ‘Verge’, ‘Scorched Carpet’, and ‘many odur thyngs’. Out of context, the significance of each word — and the profile of each glyph — is not obvious to locate but describe a real place of architectural, geographic, historical and archaeological details and materials and events. A valley of crocus flowers, a shop of soft furnishings, a rare moth, an earthquake.
Location of works:
Wandle Park (across the two sites):
‘many odur things’
UV-printed ceramic tiles, modular typeforms
Park Hill Park:
‘Verge’
UV-printed ceramic tiles, modular typeforms
Reeves Corner (across the two signs):
’Saffron’ and ‘Sofa’
Lasercut perspex modular typeforms
Turf Projects (Whitgift Centre):
‘Scorched Carpet’
Vinyl
About Fungus Press
Artists respond to Croydon’s changing public spaces through a series of newly commissioned billboard posters.
Navigating an urban centre can be claustrophobic and confusing experience.
As cities and populations grow, the space for retreat and reflection diminishes; leaving only cramped walkways between home and work. In such places, public space can offer a salve, providing room for gathering thoughts and achieving a critical distance from the flow of power and commerce, shaping the city. In collaboration with Fungus Press we are working to install a series of posters in Croydon, aimed at discussing and celebrating the importance and potential of its public spaces, as antidotes to the sometimes oppressive and perplexing urban experiences. The posters will be text-based and intend to fufill Ian Hamilton Finlay’s description of the conrete poem: as ‘a model of order, even if set in a space which is full of doubt’.
Fungus Press curated by Oscar Gaynor and Alice Cretney. With thanks to Arts Council England, Croydon Council, Sarah Kennedy, Georgie Bramble and Coral McCloud, the technicians at Norwich University of the Arts.
