Brian is passionate about his community and the role of art for political change. Trained at Ravensbourne College and The Royal College of Art, he has never looked back, remarking “what else would I have done, flower arranging?” Since then he has been painting murals for over 40 years and was recently described by Time Out as an “uber-muralist,” due to his large scale paintings and prolific work.

Brian introduces us to his infamous mural from the 1970’s The Good the Bad and The Ugly (1978) a 276-foot mural painted on the wall of the Morgan Crucible Factory on Battersea Bridge Road. The mural was created with 60 members of the community but was controversially demolished only a year after it was painted by the Morgan Crucible Company. To this day Brian still holds on to last remaining painted bricks in his studio.

As you walk round South London today, Brian’s murals are still a striking presence in the community. Brian’s commitment to nuclear disarmament is still visible through his murals Nuclear Dawn (1981) in Brixton and Riders of the Apocalypse (1983) in New Cross. In Battersea, the inspiring Battersea in Perspective (1988) still stands on Dagnall Street and in Stockwell, commemorating the locals who gave their life to war, is the Violette Szabo Mural (2001).

1000 LONDONERS

This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.
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1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit chocolatefilms.com

Transcript:

As far as I'm concerned, I like to think that mine is a unique style. It's kind of realistic and naturalistic, i've been influenced more by the Italian renaissance painters. I kind of always have things flying in the sky you wouldn't normally find, they kind of did that as well. The way I approach a mural is, first of all there's the idea of local people, so they might say they want a picture of a famous person on the mural because they used to live near by and I base it on local people and what they want. It's kind of theirs. So right from an early age, like 1973 I was doing political posters, so you know against redevelopment or in favour of local working people, their needs for housing, open spaces and jobs. I got the GLC from London Council to create a park in Battersea Bridge road and then when that was open there was this big wall, local people said can you paint a mural on that and I researched what local people wanted, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. It took about two years to do it, but I didn't do it all by myself, I was with about 60 other people, and it was only up for a year and then the place became up for redevelopment and they knocked down the factory, they knocked down the wall, knocked down the mural and then all hell broke loose. They said they had to remove the mural for health and safety reasons or some other codswallop. They did it at 3 o clock in the morning so by the time I'd got there, it was gone. They had left a bit of a right angled wall I'd done and I climbed up on it and I stopped all the traffic for 13 hours. That's where my notoriety began I think. The community's changed from when I made The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - we had a Labour council. So basically my mural is everything Labour people would enjoy and you know Battersea was much more working class then. I am trained as an artist, I did 8 years at art school and I've painted all my life so what else will I do? Flower arranging, what!