Urban Colours (1997)

Red bricks characterise many English cities like no other building material and they come in the most varied shades. Because numerous houses were disused in Liverpool during my studies there, it was easy to extract samples with a hammer and a chisel. In some cases the substance was in such a state of decay that I was able to dismantle some bricks with my hands alone since they were little more than wet sand. That triggered the idea to make paint from that material.

I selected five different buildings: a corner shop, a dwelling-house, a police station, a hospital and a church. I dismantled bricks and other material from each one of them. A collection of different stone chunks from every building was the result. The stone fragments were ground down and the "pigments" screened onto 60 x 80cm wooden boards coated with acrylic medium. "Samples" of the colours of Liverpool emerged, similar to those material samples available at builder's merchants: Urban Colours.