Wednesday, 23 May, 2018 (afternoon)
I follow the Instagram account London Calling Blog ‘Documenting Street Art since 2015.’ They blog about and post street art from every London neighbourhood and have often helped me identify the pieces I’ve photographed. One thing I noticed is that Penge has a lot of street art. It has do with LCB’s Street Art Community Project aka SprayExhibition20 when a lot of pieces went up. The trend has continued.
I used to live not too far from Penge and I remember it being a not-too-desirable fairly boring place to be back then, so I wasn’t expecting too much. I knew it was quite residential and that it had a high street and that’s about all.
I was at a disadvantage, Krish having asked where I wanted to go and me having rattled off a half dozen options. He chose Penge. In a parallel universe I’d have prepared a map and plotted art pieces along the route. Instead I had some roughly scrawled notes to go with my admitted lousy map reading skills. Argh.
We set off about 2pm and arrived just after 3pm – love the Overground! We started at the southern end of the route, Anerly. Not much to see here but one shop shutter near the station did set the pace. Walking to our first stop, Maple Road, I remarked this looked quite a lot like Herne Hill but not as grand. Krish agreed.
Maple Road is a pretty ordinary street. It starts off small and residential and then starts to gain momentum with shops before meeting Penge High Street. We explored along the route and in some back alleys (quite reference to notes) and found quite a lot of art, good, bad, and indifferent. It’s a hard job choosing photos to post here but here we go with the first lot. I’ll add artists when I find the names.
Continue reading “Penge Street Art Trail”
