Earlier this year I started a personal project after seeing some graffiti on a bridge support column for a year or so.
There is a road in Shrewsbury’s Monkmoor area called Bage Way and it’s a bypass that was built in the late 80’s and opened in the summer of 1990. One of the first crashes on the new road was one of my friends who crashed and totalled his mum’s Ford Escort, good times..
This road is thoroughfare from Monkmoor to the Reabrook and Meole Brace areas so we tend to travel down there often. On the bridge support column closest to the pavement and cycle path was a piece of simple graffiti.
VEGAN
It simply said “VEGAN” written vertically as can be seen in this picture.
Driving past this a couple of times a week, it started bugging me, one that it wasn’t a very detailed piece of street art and two, it seemed a bit hollow and pointless like a single vegetarian was crying out for some recognition.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of street art, especially when it’s well placed, meaningful, stylish, humourous and well designed.
After a few months I started to see it every time I passed it and thought of ways that I might alter it to be a fun take on the original spray job. Then one day after talking to someone about Charlie Adlard, the Penciller for The Walking Dead comics I came up with the idea that would see me waste some serious time on this pet project.
Shrewsbury based artist Charlie Adlard is responsible for some of the most iconic images in comics of the last few years including the art in a Batman graphic novel Batman:Scarface, amongst tons of other credits. Amongst his Walking Dead characters is a cult leader with a vicious sense of retribution and a taste for the violent, the character’s name is Negan. I thought that by spraying an additional straight line onto the front end of the pre-existing V I could change it.
NEGAN
But would people know who Negan was? Would they recognise that the word had been purposely changed?
Phase two of the brain wave hit me then, I could include an illustration and spray through a template in a Banksy-esque fashion to display the character’s visage! I went to work finding an image of Negan from google images as drawn by Charlie Adlard, blowing it up to a larger scale and then printing it and trimming out the parts for the template. I found the perfect image and changed the size to something larger, saved it as a PDF and then printed it out in Poster format, where it will spread it out over multiple pages and give you alignment marks etc..
When I saw the image assembled in it’s entirety I got to thinking about how spray painting graffiti might be a bad thing to do, after all, it’s illegal and not a very socially responsible thing to do. At this point I came up with an idea born in a news story from a week before. A man was draping cling film between trees in a beauty spot and then spraying art onto the clingfilm, not damaging or leaving any permanent marks on the environment. That’s what I’d do.
MIDNIGHT MISSION #1
Three weeks into February 2021 I was ready to attempt my first mission at responsible-ish graffiti. The Negan poster had been printed out and it was quite big, my wife was asking what I was doing producing such an illustration so I made up some nonsense about using it as a background on Teams meetings whilst I was working from home. She’s used to my weirdness so let it go without further inquiry.
My son and I had agreed that the Saturday night after midnight would be an ideal time to go and fix Negan to the bridge. It was quiet, lockdown was in effect and there was little traffic around so we parked on Bell Lane and walked the last few hundred feet with the toolkit.
- Small set of steps
- Huge poster of Negan
- Two rolls of clingfilm
- Rolls of parcel tape (clear)
- Knife (dodgy I know)
- Tin of spray paint (black)
- 360° Camera for video and photos
We got to the site just after midnight and barring a few cars driving past it was relatively peaceful, whenever a car appeared in the distance we downed tools and pretended we were walking on the footpath, before returning to the job in hand after they’d passed us.
I stood on the small steps to stick the poster up and realised the steps were too short, the V was too high up to reach over the top of it. We chose to put the picture of Negan on the reverse side of the post with the logic that people driving one way would return later and would therefore see both parts.
Once I had taped the poster up quickly, we wrapped around the bridge support with cling film so that it would hold it against the concrete, keep it relatively dry and not cause any damage to the surface. The cling film wrap went down lower than the base of the poster and covered over the VEG. Now I could spray the single line onto the cling film to convert the V to an N, without marking the concrete.
It was an unmitigated success!!
NEGONE
A week later it had been removed from the bridge with no explanation to be seen anywhere either in social media or the local news websites. It was time for the next step.
I hadn’t thought past the first of these installations but as soon as NEGAN had been removed I knew I had to do another, after all the pointless VEGAN was still there..
What name could I utilise the VEGAN in without going to too much trouble. Meghan Markle was in the news at that time for some reason I can’t really be bothered to remember but there is an obvious H in her name which didn’t work so I thought of the most prominent MEGAN I could and after a brief Google to confirm the popularity I settled on Megan Fox from the Transformers films amongst other projects.
MEGAN
Time to pick a good image of the young actor that was recognisable as her but not too detailed, I was envisioning how a template spraying would be easier with less details to choose the correct image.
The picture I chose had some cleavage which I found unnecessary so I cut it down to make it easier to mount it above the VEGAN word. By this time my wife had figured out what we were up to, after walking past the bridge and seeing the NEGAN in place before it was removed. She asked not to be involved so she could have plausible deniability.
MIDNIGHT MISSION #2 – MISSION ABORTED
Three weeks after NEGAN was installed, my son and I were back to install MEGAN, this time with an updated toolkit, containing taller ladders, a long stick to put the cling film roll on and make it easier to pass the roll around the pillar, it was too far to reach around the pillar physically.
This time we parked in the same spot and carried a tall pair of step ladders across to the bridge after midnight on the Sunday night. Everything was set and then the clingfilm failed in an epic way.
You know how you peel sellotape off a roll and it rips lengthwise and then you can’t find the end and if you do find the end it only gets narrower as you tear lengthwise when unrolling it? No? Just me then… Well this is what happened with both the primary roll and secondary redundant backup roll of clingfilm. After a while, and a couple of police cars driving past us we decided to abort mission and come back another time when we had the clingfilm under control.
MIDNIGHT MISSION #3 – MEGAN INSTALLED
Going back after midnight on Monday evening we rocked up to the bridge with our toolkit, if the police had picked us up they’d have thought we were going equipped to commit burglary until I explained just how stoopid I am!!
The taller ladders and slightly shorter poster enabled us to mount the poster above the word sprayed and using the cling film again I extended downwards and my son sprayed the two additional strokes to convert the V to M. This time, the image was on the same side as the word so it made more sense to passing motorists. (If it made any sense) Spot on!!
Whilst Megan adorned the bridge support pillar I got my mind to thinking about other uses I could put the graffiti to in case of a removal. Three weeks after the installation of MEGAN she was still there, and I was happy to see her remain there for a bit longer. On the 28th March I was surfing on the web and noticed a Shropshire Star story about the mysterious poster on the bridge. By this time I was also ready for the next iteration.
KEEGAN / REGAN
Other options available I’d thought of that I could use without too much of an issue were KEEGAN with a photo of the instantly recognisable hairstyle that Kevin Keegan wore back in the 80’s and also REGAN the possessed girl played by Linda Blair in the horror classic Exorcist film.
But no, I chose one that was even easier, the addition of KE and hising the V was an issue for Kev and an alteration of a V to an R was possible but it would have been on the sketchy side.
The night after the mystery story had been in the Shropshire Star I was back out again. This time I had a new partner in crime as my daughter had returned from university so she agreed to aid and abet the effort.
MIDNIGHT MISSION #4
Giggling like idiots after churning through most of my laser printer toner on my Xeros 6515 we carried our equipment back to the bridge ready to swap out MEGAN for the replacement.
The clingfilm went without a hitch and the spraying wasn’t required this time and before we knew it we were taking selfies with the success that was our third installation. Meet Peter.
EGAN
This time I chose to print out the picture of Peter Egan in a larger size and have it come lower down, he didn’t have any cleavage like the previous image, but his smart jacket and shirt covered the V expertly. He looked massive on the side of this bridge column and we were impressed. Peter Egan was a big hit in the eighties on TV shows but had also made a successful return to the screen in Downton Abbey apparently, I don’t watch it but that’s what I heard.
Two guys walking a dog whilst smoking a spliff passed by at one point. (The men were toking, not the dog, just to be clear) They asked if we were the same people who’d put up the Megan Fox picture and then promised not to let on that they’d seen us before they carried on to a 24hr shop no doubt for some Coco Pops and Twixes.
After the Shropshire Star article I’d created an email address for the artist to contact the reporter, and we named it Mr Wansky after a family joke about a misspelling accident on another bit of house decorating. Think emulsion dick and balls on a bedroom wall….
I’d contacted the reporter and told him that I (Mr Wansky) definitely knew the difference between Megan Fox and Meghan Markle and I was doing it to highlight the pointless graffiti that had been there for at least a year as well as having a bit of fun.
Once someone had told him about the EGAN installation, he published another article as can be seen below. I took a screenshot for posterity and I’m glad I did, within an hour or two it had been removed from the newspaper’s website. I suspect that he’d been asked to remove it to prevent further copycat attacks but I’m not sure.
EGONE
By the middle of April EGAN was looking a bit flappy and I was preparing to remove him and replace with the next installation. My poster was printed and primed with the implementation toolkit that involved a tin of spray to help cover the last letter “N”. It was nearly time to do it, when I had my first dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine and ended up in bed for a day and half. Whilst coming out the back end of the slight malaise I was informed by my family that EGAN was now EGONE, he’d been removed by someone, presumably the council.
Not only had they removed the cling wrapped poster but they’d done a proper job and removed the original sprayed graffiti word.
With the VEGAN gone I felt I’d have to stop as it was mission accomplished, no more pointless vegetarian vandalism based propaganda on the bridge and I couldn’t justify spraying any further graffiti as I was pleased it had all been cleaned off.
VEGA
It looks like Vincent would have to stay rolled up ready for another project in the future, better than being shot up in a loo whilst reading the Modesty Blaise novel.
The only thing that remained to do was to capture a photo of it without the VEGAN or any of my additions. I visited the bridge after dragging myself out of bed when feeling better and took a photo.
The VEGAN had gone but some remnants of an even older V were there in Red paint but I was pleased that it looked a little tidier.
After discussing it with a few friends I found out that a number of people have noticed the posters and alterations to the graffiti but had no idea who was doing it and for what reason. If I don’t fully understand the reason how the hell will they work it out???
Since the EGAN was removed I’ve not seen any other graffiti appear on this bridge and I’m grateful to the council for removing the spray paint. The council have done a great job recently of working with local artists to decorate some BT Connection boxes around the town and this is great to see, rather than basic tags adorning the green boxes that appear around the town centre.
For a gallery of images of my installations on the bridge at Bage Way see below and thanks for reading this far. I hope that my silly little story of wasting my time might have entertained a few people along the way.
[…] Before this lecture I had never heard of Detournement but I’ve been busy over the years in photoshop and more recently carried out some of this style of work on a piece of graffiti in my home town of Shrewsbury. https://bobgriffithsphoto.uk/?p=2079 […]
[…] my bit of fun with the Socially Responsible Graffiti that can be read about in this previous post, I’ve been keeping an eye out for something else to […]