In 2011, Wandsworth Arts Festival approached Creative Producer, Karen Poley, to run a project on the Alton Estate in Roehampton. A number of bikes were painted and installed around the estate as part of a Bicycle Ballet workshop and performance project, during the festival.

Starting with painting. With Maria Tribe & Ray Gibson outside Alton Hall Community Centre, meeting lots of locals. So many bike enthusiasts, plus trick cyclists & seriously pimped rides.

Tireless technicians Martin & Simon

As the bike below was installed on the side of one of blocks of flats, a woman in a block across leaned out of her window & asked “What are you doing?” “Parking my bike!’came the answer!”

Watching the bikes being installed above Roehampton Library, a local resident came up laughing that the installations reminded him of a saying in his country, Romania, ‘Green Horses on the Wall.’ When you see green horses on the wall, you’re dreaming of incredible or impossible ideas, as in ‘a pipe dream’ or ‘when pigs might fly.’

‘Green Horses on the Wall’ became the name for the project’s next iteration in 2012.

We also placed bikes around the dance of cycling workshop/performance space

& when the bikes were all taken down, young people appeared from nowhere asking if they could have them. On instruction of how to carefully dispose of them, the bikes all headed off into the estate for another chapter…

Images © Ray Gibson / KP Projects CIC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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