While the phrase about the value of illustrations is generally attributed to American advertising executive Fred R. Barnard, a London based artist is proving that words can create pictures – or more accurately, mosaics – that can also play an important part in expressing a community’s identity. Maud Milton and her talented team of artists, known as Artyface Community Art , work out of studios at Trinity Buoys Wharf in East London’s Leamouth district. They have become well known across the capital and beyond for helping community groups assemble totally unique mosaics which incorporate the story of their location along with Leamouth the people living there, depicting and celebrating local notable people, places, events, wildlife and much more.
In particular, Artyface Community Art has been instrumental in fashioning striking interpretations of the ubiquitous London Underground roundel, using hundreds of handmade tiles which carry individual words relating to the locality.
Some of their successes, including ones which helped provide people with purpose and important community interaction during lockdown, are to be seen at stations including Selhurst, Gospel Oak, Chingford and Walthamstow. Elsewhere Maud and her colleagues have worked closely with school pupils and local residents to design tiles for mosaics for new buildings and walls in the public realm: all mounted on Marmox Multiboards in metal frames Maud Milton explains:
“Our work is a combination of classic and modern styles, as well as symbols to do with the history of London and other cities, such as transport and commerce.”
“We often try and put a twist on things and as a team we have a unique skill for designing things which fit in with their surroundings as well as with the historical or social narrative. I make some of the tiles– sometimes based on suggestions that have been sent to me by email and social media – mostly people press patterns and words in themselves. We gather these mini-masterpieces and trim, dry, fire, glaze and assemble the mosaic.”
Artyface Community Art’s activities also have a very strong ethical and environmental ethos, with thorough research going into the historical threads and other themes which are represented, while production uses 100% some of the tiles– sometimes based on suggestions that have been sent to me by email and social media – as well as recycling clay, using some tiles that would otherwise go to landfill and other responsibly sourced materials. Maud continued:
“We always try and do everything we can to create work to the best possible quality and to ensure it is durable. So that it is a legacy which will last for a very long time.”
Building on the success of her early projects which were well received by both the public and the authorities, including Transport for London, Maud is now being asked to produce more of the roundels for stations across London and elsewhere. Maud commented: We have 30 roundels at various stations on the network, with Black Horse Road displaying the most – with a total of 16 including one large one which measures approximately 130cm across the namebar. Then there’s also Thornton Heath, Gospel Oak, Upper Holloway, Waltham Forest and South Tottenham and in the past few months we have undertaken work at two stations in Birmingham – University and Perry Barr, where new stations were built for the Commonwealth Games. Our approach is always to try and get into the history of an area, to find out what makes it unique .
Aside from railway and underground station signs, Maud utilizes Marmox Multiboards for any project which is going to be set in a metal frame, including house names or numbers. Recently they created mosaics for Navigator Square in the London Borough of Islington. Paying tribute to the very significant contribution which immigrants from Ireland made to the area, images such as a navigator’s digging implements, a nurse’s badge for Whittington Hospital (at one point 83% of the nurses there were Irish) and Gaelic knots are set against the Irish Tricolor.
As well as charities like ‘Big Local’, funding has been forthcoming from a variety of sources including councils and housebuilders or other building developers seeking ways to engage with local communities. It’s a great way to utilise section 106 and benefit communities around developments.
A spokesperson for Marmox, Grant Terry, Marketing Manager, added:
“We have been delighted to provide Maud and her team with quantities of our Multiboard to help facilitate these very important local projects, involving many different members of the community. In fact, Multiboard is an ideal substrate for these mosaics, not only being low weight, easy to cut, strong and robust, but the reinforced cement coating to the extruded polystyrene core presents an ideal surface to bond tiles onto.”
It may be some time before the number of projects undertaken by Artyface Community Art reaches four figures, but with commissions like Black Horse Road involving more than 500 children and adults, the benefits of its work are definitely touching the lives of many thousands.
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