The 43 parts that made up the #43ArtDrop piece were (carefully) hung out on the streets around Hackney Wick, Fish Island and the canal yesterday. Carefully hung, never dropped, that would be careless.  A piece of art in 43 parts, all 43 painted on two recycled unwanted wooden pallets picked up off the East London street, painted, and then cut in to 43 parts and painted on some more.

The 43 pieces we’re all painted, a thorny piece of fresh growth on each one, a message on a sticker on the back, a hash tag and request for finders to post photos, a selfie with their find or a just a photo of the piece on their wall, post up those photos and use the hashtag, no so on the end, it is one piece called #43ArtDrop, post the images on social media for us to find.

So all 43 parts of the piece were hung out around Hackney Wick over the Saturday of the Hackney Wicked weekend, 43 parts of the piece all hung there for people to take should they wish to. Hopefully people would be respectful enough to only take one it, had thought about saying so on the back, but no, surely no need? (A little disappointing to see someone post a photo on instargram of ten of them all on her desk with a declaration that she was trying to find them all, I must confess that photo had be thinking about the notion of art and just giving it away for free and….)

43 pieces hung out and around the streets and especially on the landmark that is the old Lord Napier pub (love what Aida Wilde and her friends did with the place earlier in the week…).  43 pieces left out, #43ArtDrop hashtag on the back, let’s see where they go and if we ever hear about any of them again.  Let’s hope for photos and tales of where they have gone and who found them, where they are hanging and who said what, this is partly about engagement and interaction and art being for all, about getting involved and not just having it locked behind closed gallery doors or in collections.

Rather like leaving pieces of art for people to take, especially when it has been painted on something left on the street or in a skip, something that was heading for landfill. And especially when the pieces are left to be found somewhere as vitally important to a community as Hackney Wick is – a place loved and tended to by artists when virtually no one else seemed to care that much.  Treasure these places while you can, treasure your art spaces and the energy artists bring to dying places, treasure the creativity and don’t just push it and us all out  #savehackneywick

A big thanks to everyone who got involved in the #43ArtDrop and everyone who made Hackney Wicked happen again this year. The photos of people with their parts of the piece are starting to appear on line, we shall gather them up and collect them together…

 

Here’s an album documenting all 43 pieces as they were hung, some of them weren’t there for long, others hung around for a bit, some of them may still be there?

Click on an image to enlarge or to run the fractured slide show