Hasta La Ideas

Abbie Brandon’s short film follows Ben Eine as he paints his recent Oranges and Lemons piece on the side of the London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden…

Clambering around on scaffolding, Eine introduces his large-scale project which, he says, will spell out “oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements and then something else that you’ve never heard of.”

Despite Westminster council’s notorious zero tolerarance position on street art, Eine hopes his typographic commission will keep the issue firmly on the agenda.

In the film, Brandon asks him about his wider work and the appeal of painting on the street. “Once I’ve taken a photograph [of it] and walked away, I don’t really care about it,” says Eine, passing comment on the transitory nature of the medium, where artists rarely see their work up for very long.

“Ben’s a man on a mission this year,” writes Brandon on her Vimeo page, “having painted all round the world in all sorts of places with all sorts of people, but this is his first piece in the UK in 2011.”

Brandon’s website is at abbiebrandon.squarespace.com.