It is always sad when we have to document the loss of another mural, but it is doubly so when the piece in question had recently been promised funding for its cleaning and repair. So it is with great regret that we report that the Woolwich Tramshed Mural suffered irreparable smoke damage in the riots that afflicted Woolwich and many other areas of the capital in August 2011.
Photo: Emile Sercombe
The Mural was created by the locally based Greenwich Mural Workshop in 1990 as part of the redevelopment of General Gordon Square. The piece illustrated the gathering and transportion of food around the world, reflecting both Woolwich’s long maritime and trading history and the multicultural nature of the modern local community.
Adorning the interior walls of the old tramshed which is today home to shops and a music venue, each scene is enclosed in an arch – in some ways like the murals seen at the Calthorpe Project.In the spandrels, workers paint the mural or work on the arches. Within these are depictions of people gathering food, working the land and communally eating – the people working together, a recurring theme in the work Greenwich Mural Workshop.
The London Mural Preservation Society has launched a campaign to replace this important work with a new mural, gaining the support of local community groups and the original artists who say
‘As local artists we feel that a duplicate mural or a re-imaged mural is an appropriate response to the the damage caused during the riots and looting, and could be used to address some of the issues about our society and people¹s worth within it as a way of repairing the social rift that has
occurred.’
You can show your support or become involved on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Campaign-for-a-new-mural-for-Woolwich/191169047616409 or by emailing us at londonmuralpreservationsociety@yahoo.com
