Plain 2013 - 2020
According to Roget’s thesaurus, the word plain describes the bare, the blank, unembellished, and basic. Equally, it evokes the mundane, the ordinary.
Seemingly empty, these walls are expected to be ignored. Yet at closer observation layers of history begin to emerge. Traces of what once was unfold the passage of time. Aged and weathered, iconic London bricks reveal earthy hues in gradients from ochre, red, and brown to soot-covered blacks. Surfaces of neatly finished, or haphazardly improvised alterations come to the fore. While some facades display peculiar cast iron Pattress plates that reinforce their structures, others are adorned with intricate brick arrangements, lauding bricklayers’ craftsmanship.
These ‘commonly uncommon’ structures are part of our day-to-day experience as we walk past them. So much so that their absurdity only becomes apparent once taken out of their larger context and presented side by side. Grouped in pairs, a certain order of shape, colour, or texture becomes noticeable. In a sequence, they transcend into species, a taxonomy of London walls.
Apart from their documentary aspect, these images invite us to observe more attentively, to notice the uncommonly common.