We're a community interest company making art from materials that would otherwise be waste - decommissioned buses, retired aircraft, lorry tarp, plastic bound for landfill. We exhibit the work in person and online.
So when we start a new piece, we begin with a question: can we paint on something that already exists? Almost always, the answer is yes.
Below are a few of the projects where that question led somewhere worth talking about.
A retired plane became a single canvas.
Where most exterior commissions of this scale would build a hoarding, set or installation from scratch, this one used an aircraft that was already out of service. The fuselage, wings and tail became the surface of the work.
Fewer materials made. Fewer materials thrown away.
Artwork by Slawn
Lorry curtains, reused as canvas.
Tarpaulin lorry curtains end their working life as landfill or low-grade recyclate - they're hard to recycle properly because of the layers of PVC, scrim and printed branding fused into them.
We've taken those same curtains and used them as canvas. They're heavier than canvas, take paint differently, and carry the marks of the previous job - a scuff, a bolt-hole, a faded logo. We think those marks are part of the work.
A canvas with a previous life - and a finished piece that wears it.
Artwork by Dan Oliver
A double-decker, painted top to tail.
Slawn took a London bus that had reached the end of its working life and turned it into a moving piece of art. A vehicle that would otherwise have gone to a depot for scrap stayed in public, in service to a brand.
It's the simplest kind of sustainability there is: don't build a new thing to paint on. Paint the thing that already exists.
Artwork by Slawn
Bus panels, lifted off and turned into individual works.
When London buses are taken out of service, their panels - sheet aluminium and curved steel - usually go to a scrapyard to be weighed in. We've taken those panels and turned them into individual, framed pieces of art.
The painting still gets made. The panels get a third life, on a wall, instead of being melted down.
Artwork by Pascal Möhlmann
Canvas made from plastic that would otherwise be landfill.
Some of our work is painted on a canvas we've created from plastic that was, on a strict reading, already waste - material that wasn't going to be recycled and was on its way to landfill. We process and prepare it as a paintable surface.
The substrate becomes part of the message. A piece made on a surface like this is making a different argument than a piece made on a fresh, factory-stretched cotton.
Artwork by Jonni Cheatwood