Each glyph that makes up a sign takes its form from architectural or accidental details in Croydon’s built up and built over centre. Bevels, bypasses, buttresses, struts, quoins: the letterforms have been set in a way that is less about harmonious placement and more about the available space – a technique shared by the area’s town planners and those who patch up the roads and pavements. The words, too, have been lifted from the immediate textual environment of road signs, ads and local newspapers of Croydon, and from the town’s archive of surveys, maps and meeting minutes. The terms and letterforms are euphonic and strange when isolated or set in simple combinations: ‘Saffron’ and ‘Sofa’, ‘Verge’, ‘Scorched Carpet’, and ‘many odur thyngs’. Out of context, the significance of each word — and the profile of each glyph — is not obvious to locate but describe a real place of architectural, geographic, historical and archaeological details and materials and events. A valley of crocus flowers, a shop of soft furnishings, a rare moth, an earthquake.
Location of works:
Wandle Park (across the two sites):
‘many odur things’
UV-printed ceramic tiles, modular typeforms
Park Hill Park:
‘Verge’
UV-printed ceramic tiles, modular typeforms
Reeves Corner (across the two signs):
’Saffron’ and ‘Sofa’
Lasercut perspex modular typeforms
Turf Projects (Whitgift Centre):
‘Scorched Carpet’
Vinyl
Bios
Peter Nencinihas worked across print and television with Svenska Tecknare, New York Times, BBC, Channel 4, and Théâtre National de Toulouse. Recent commissions for Eastside Projects Birmingham, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Walker Art Center Minneapolis and Wallpaper* / Salone del Mobile Milan have resulted in architectural models, prostheses for furniture, pedagogical apparatus, props for performance – narrative forms that shuttle between typo- and picto-graphic. He teaches at Norwich University of the Arts – previously at Camberwell College of Arts, Ecole Supérieure d’Art et Design Valence, Sint-Lucas / Vooruit Ghent, St. Brides London, Pratt Institute New York.
Bryony Quinn is a writer, editor and lecturer. Her research and writing focuses on figurative and spatial obliquity — things that lean, slopes, diagonals, digressions — and she has presented her essays at the Turner Contemporary, Frieze Art Fair and the Royal College of Art. Quinn has worked with and for various art, literary and design institutions including Fitzcarraldo Editions, Cabinet Magazine, Artangel, Barbican Gallery, Studio Frith and It’s Nice That. Presently, she leads Contextual Studies in Graphic Design at University of East London and is a lecturer on the MA Graphic Media Design programme at London College of Communication.
// ABOUT FUNGUS PRESS
Artists respond to Croydon’s changing public spaces through a series of newly commissioned billboard posters.
Navigating an urban centre can be claustrophobic and confusing experience.
As cities and populations grow, the space for retreat and reflection diminishes; leaving only cramped walkways between home and work. In such places, public space can offer a salve, providing room for gathering thoughts and achieving a critical distance from the flow of power and commerce, shaping the city. In collaboration with Fungus Press we are working to install a series of posters in Croydon, aimed at discussing and celebrating the importance and potential of its public spaces, as antidotes to the sometimes oppressive and perplexing urban experiences. The posters will be text-based and intend to fufill Ian Hamilton Finlay’s description of the conrete poem: as ‘a model of order, even if set in a space which is full of doubt’.
Fungus Press curated by Oscar Gaynor and Alice Cretney
With thanks to Arts Council England, Croydon Council, Sarah Kennedy, Georgie Bramble and Coral McCloud, the technicians at Norwich University of the Arts, Oscar Gaynor, Peter Nencini, Bryony Quinn, Sam Cotterell, Laura Eldret, Luke Nairn, Godai Sahara, Kitty Clark, Adam Bridgland and Lee Johnson, Phoebe Baines, pea proposals, Marie Jacotey, Esme Toler, Jemma Egan, Jaione Cerrato, Åbäke, Leah Clements, Ed Hill, Alex Brenchley, Bryony Gillard, Emily Pope, An Endless Supply, Harry Meadley, Ben Cain, Emily Speed, Tom & Simon Bloor, Emily MaCartan, Michael Dryden, Joseph Curran, George Chinnery, Barnaby Lee, Paul Myers, Chris Mewies, Alastair McKinlay, Paul Harrison, Jack Kew, Thomas Smith, Andrew Dickinson & Friends of Park Hill Park.
