Palimpsest is something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

The public are invited to pick & peel at large interactive paper panels, to ‘create’ a new artwork. 

I am interested in the way the layers of the city, its events and interactions with its citizens are built up and revealed over time through bill posters. The layers of paper, accidentally peeled by wind & rain (and deliberately by some human hands as they walk past) create accidental artworks. No two are the same. An artwork made up of an illustrated eye, contrasted with some text, a patch of colour, a photo of a hand, an indistinct figure; drawn from a dozen or more bill posters advertising this season’s music scene, theatrical productions and arthouse films. 

The concept came to me at the start of the pandemic, when I imagined cities around the world closing down, but all the bill posters of events that would never happen, remaining on the streets, tunnels and walls, fading, warping and peeling. A memory of the lost energy of cultural activities that never happened. 

Palimpsest creates space for deliberate interactions, inviting the community to pick and peel the layers of paper, to create accidental artworks.

It is not often that audiences are ‘allowed’ to interact, let alone be encouraged to touch and ‘destroy’ artworks.