Hailing from a city renowned for its steel industry, it’s perhaps understandable why Sheffield’s Jo Peel has a deep love for changing urban landscapes and the hidden infrastructure with which they’re built. Once again Jo has left the surroundings of her hometown to take on a full-scale artistic assault on East London with her current project, Pipe Dreams.
For those on the ball, you may remember Jo from the summer last year when she took on one of the areas most sought after walls, the Village Underground. Stepping it up a gear with her biggest project to date, Jo is now tackling the monstrous Red Gallery Market, a space that makes the Village Underground look like a doodle on a post-it note.
With a background in both illustration and interior design, Jo has fused a unique way of creating narratives through the changing environment around us. Watching Jo manoeuvre her lift 40ft in the air, armed with stencils and spray paint, it’s pretty safe to say she’s moved a fair distance from her days as a kid making flick-books of her teachers falling down holes.
“Every door handle has been put up by someone, whether, because, it was the cheapest or because they’ve been looking for months and found the perfect one. Everything has a story.”
Jo is very much a storyteller whose work organically unfolds and changes as she paints. Working her incredibly demanding schedule, this project will see her painting, weather permitting of course, virtually non-stop, for a whole month. Hours spent filling in one scene are constantly whitewashed and repainted with subtle changes. She’s not precious about preserving her work, a great representation of the ephemeral nature of street art, also a trait I think many of London’s street artists could do with adopting. Like much of the subject matter she depicts, she seems comfortable with regeneration and change and I really get the impression she’s able to find beauty in all of it.
Capturing the temporary nature of her work with regular photographs, she builds a collection of countless images. The individual stills are then stitched together to bring forward a time-lapsed video of her vision.
Progress began a few weeks ago by painting the side of the bus/office of Alternative London and has now moved onwards to the huge surface that looms over Rivington Street. If you get a chance, I strongly recommend you to head to the market to go see Jo in action some time before April, when she finishes. If you find yourself there between Wednesday and Friday make sure you grab a burger from Burger Bear, a pop-up that deserves an article of its own.
Alternative London have hosted Jo for this project and will be showcasing the final video with a screening alongside the Red Market’s 3rd birthday on the 5th of May. If you miss this then there’s a scheduled showing at the Hackney Picture House the following day. You can stay in the loop by checking out Jo’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/jopeelartwork.