Estates

I visited four estates all a mile (north, east, south and west) from my home in North London - I used photographs from three of the four estates.

Dunboyne Road Estate, Gospel Oak

Dunboyne estate was a more idealistic estate. Some of its structures would almost seem luxury if it wasn’t for the diminishing paint.

However, the lack of care in terms of paint caused some natural colours to emerge contrasting with the plastic whites and blacks painted onto the walls previously. This allowed me to create pieces exaggerating the colours and shapes.

I find this piece successfully depicts the positive side of the estate highlighting its rich colours and clear sense of depth. But it also shows the parts of the estate wearing away and how this can be seen as beautiful in its own way.

The green tones throughout the piece give the idea of mould and moss growing. Furthermore, the roughness of the white paint with hints of orange and yellows throughout adds to the neglected feeling of some parts of the estate along with the inaccurate/careless perspective.

I found both pieces very successful due to the use of colour and shapes. For me the contrast between beauty and degradation gives a sense of the dual nature of the estate: many working class residents are a living realisation of the utopian visions of the architects who created estates like this; yet at the same time, they have been compromised by their own success, as flats have been increasingly sold off to the middle-classes. And the brutal truth of the modern society is that those living in such estates are the minority; most working classes remain stuck in poor housing.

I also asked someone from the estate about its idealism and brutalist architecture: they said that once a year a group of artists briefly come into the estate and take pictures of it. This resonates with the world depicted by Darren Mcgarvey in ‘Poverty Safari’: have the middle classes become detached sightseers, peering at poverty from afar, treating working classes as something to be observed but not engaged with?

WhIttington estate, Highgate

The Whittington estate was another estate which seemed to have lived up to its initial ideals: there was a strong sense of community, and the appealing architecture was complimented by the greenery planted throughout the estate. Yet not all is well beneath these apparently serene surroundings.

According to someone I spoke with at Camden Council, around half of the homes are now privately owned, and this has created some tensions between residents.

It is interesting how these architectural projects, originally intended to help house working classes, have become increasingly attractive to the middle classes one generation on. Perhaps part of the reason is that inequalities in society are now affecting almost everyone outside the richest elites.

I produced two similar paintings for this estate: one painting is of a close up of the harsh, ageing concrete, and the other is of a more pleasant image of the estate showing its intricate shapes and the nature surrounding them.

I decided to use harsh clean shapes and colours to form the structure of the estate and depict the empty spaces created from them. This created a slight sense of depth. In addition, I used a dark green colour to form the idea of greenery surrounding the structure.

I found this piece to be mostly successful. However, I believe that the sense of depth and perspective could have been more accurate and therefore have created more of a likeness to the original photo.

For this piece I used a more limited colour palette than usual to depict the more concrete man-made idea of the estate. But I found it caused the piece to seem a bit empty. This could have subconsciously happened due to some areas of the estate being empty and lifeless. The use of orange, influenced by the Shining, adds some life to the piece, whilst still leaving large empty spaces behind it creating the desolate feeling.

Agar Grove estate, Camden

Agar Grove is an estate in Camden with a history of gang violence and murder. The block stands there looking stranded and lost, surrounded by gentrified buildings which are most likely unaffordable for the people who live within the council estate.

This piece was of one of the new settlements created in the vicinity of the estate. I used a dark, dull colour scheme for the building with a royal deep purple to connote a feeling of money. I also painted the gate that surrounded the building in a light abnormal blue to highlight it: it almost seems to be a barrier from the Agar Grove estate again. For me this symbolises how the middle classes can observe the working classes almost through a gate in a zoo – reflecting the ideas in ‘Poverty Safari’ a book about continuing class divides by Darren McGarvey. I found the colour scheme of this piece powerful and the overall piece successful.

This piece was of part of the Agar Grove estate. I found this piece mostly unsuccessful due to its failure to connote feelings of isolation and decay. Furthermore, I find the composition of the piece confusing due to there being too much empty space which contrasts with the stationary strength of the block. However, I do like some of the colours used and angles produced from the shapes which I will be using in another piece for Agar Grove.

Estate Paintings

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