London:Athens is a photographic series documenting street notices and advertisements found across the two cities since March 2020. Taken by the artists as they navigated and explored the streets during coronavirus lockdowns, the images make visible a multitude of personal and political responses to the unprecedented conditions we currently face in the city.

For this exhibition at Schloss Wiepersdorf, the artists were commissioned to produce a large-scale, outdoor installation. Taking a selection of the photographs these were printed on large aluminium sheets and attached like public signage to trees in the grounds of the Residence for artists and scholars, a site-specific intervention into the surrounding nature. The selected images document street notices attached to metal poles, lampposts, and other urban infrastructure, layering these fragments of the city onto the features of a rural environment.

The photographs in London:Athens focus our attention on street notices that respond directly to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as global political conflicts, local campaigns and personal issues. From racial justice and anti-fascist protest, environmental campaigns, conspiracy theories, precarious employment, lost businesses and loved pets — we are drawn into a complex space of public and private worlds. Where slogans and statements call out an array of issues, competing ideologies and everyday personal struggles, for passers-by to take notice.

Posted anonymously, these typically overlooked materials form an important public conversation in the city. Taped and stuck to the urban fabric, their messages disclose personal and political perspectives of the current conflicts in the city, triggered by public health and political crises. Layered onto street furniture and weathered by time and the elements, they invite us to ask questions. Who posted these notices and what does it reveal about their lives and experiences? How are these experiences shared, reflected or contrasted across two global yet geographically distinct cities? At a time where communication and social interaction have become almost exclusively digital, how do these notices leave traces of an embodied occupation of public space? Who pays attention to these materials and how are people moved, engaged or hailed by them?

London: Athens exhibition comes directly out of the research and photographic work produced by the artists as selected residents for the Art in a Conflicted World Fellowship at Schloss Weipersdorf during 2020. An exhibition booklet produced alongside the installation and photographic series includes a text work based on a transcript of WhatsApp conversations between the artists over the same period. Detailing their unfolding responses to this period of upheaval and conflict, the dialogue follows a loose chronology of recent events as experienced by the artists. From receiving news about family members contracting covid to discussions of current affairs reporting, the work highlights the ongoing political commentary, exchange and friendship that sits at the heart of the artists collaborative practice, often serving as the starting point or context from which their visual works emerge.

London:Athens builds on Lloyd Corporation’s long held interest and collection of street notices and advertisements over the last seven years. Their investigation has included documenting and collecting hundreds of posters, messages, stickers, signs and other urban ephemera from different countries around the world. Utilising these materials in sculptural and installation works, the project brings to light complex, conflicting social interactions and informal communications that occur, person to person, and in public across urban spaces.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39403