Constantine Gras - Community artist in residence - the project of focus he spent 4 months at Lancaster West Estate.
The project - To design a new mural for the Grenfell Tower.
Gras started the project by running a series of workshops in which he asked the children who lived in the estate to draw on a large wall covered in paper.
He notes that the children are '...clearly a defining pattern of imagery taking shape...' The tower structure and surrounding buildings, themselves sometimes with family and cultural identity.
Animals were a big feature. A video on Gras's blog shows the children drawing of elephants the size of the tower block and giraffes who reach the sky. Recordings of the conversations he had with the children about these plays over a showreel of the images.
In March 2016 Gras started directly responding to the issues facing the Lancaster west estate in light of the new housing and planning bill. His response was another large scale drawing.
He also started the research for this in December 2015, where he recorded a senior residence Christmas meal through photography and conversation, some of whom mentioned that they had lived there all their lives. He also documented through drawings council meeting between the residences and the elected council members.
These records that Gras made have been made all the more significant by the fire that happened at Grenfell, recently reported that 71 people died. He worked with individuals directly affected by the tragedy, but his work has drawn attention. I heard about his project through channel 4 news the week of the fire when they mentioned that some of the children involved died or lost family. The drawing gave wider society a perspective of the sense of pride, unity and the people. And highlighted the fact that society still has a class system in which the poor are struggling and neglected. Images below http://www.grasart.com/blog/category/community Gras.C , (2015-2016), Constantine Gras,http://www.grasart.com/blog/category/community
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