R
Rom Levy
Guest
- Thread Author
- #1
Slawn took his painting practice into the open air on 13 October 2026, bringing a crane-suspended canvas to Doon Street Car Park on London’s South Bank. Presented with Saatchi Yates during Frieze week, the event made the act of painting visible at the scale of the surrounding buildings.
The setup was direct: a large canvas held above the ground, a raised working platform and an audience looking up from behind the barriers. The machinery became part of the picture. Before a mark had even landed, the gap between the canvas and the street gave the work a physical tension that a gallery wall would have removed.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.
The gallery’s photographs show looping figures and faces accumulating across the surface. Red and blue passages spread through the middle, while darker outlines and a yellow corner pull the eye back across the composition. White marks cut through the colour, leaving parts of the canvas open and making others feel crowded. Individual characters become harder to separate as the layers build.
Seen from below, that loose drawing becomes something bodily: the artist’s reach, the height of the platform and the distance between spectators and painting all remain legible. The photographs of the crowd are useful here. They bring the scale back to people, rather than leaving the canvas as an isolated image on a screen.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.
For a publication rooted in work encountered outside, the interesting point is the temporary use of the site. A car park became a place to watch an artwork take shape, with the work suspended against the city rather than permanently attached to it. The event also made visible the equipment and labour that large outdoor projects often keep outside the finished photograph.
Saatchi Yates has linked the project to a charitable print release. According to the gallery, proceeds from the Slawn Crane Painting limited print will go to Art of Wishes and Make-A-Wish UK. That announcement concerns the print, rather than a stated sale of the suspended original.
Take a look at the photographs throughout, and see Saatchi Yates’ event documentation for footage of the painting in progress.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.
The setup was direct: a large canvas held above the ground, a raised working platform and an audience looking up from behind the barriers. The machinery became part of the picture. Before a mark had even landed, the gap between the canvas and the street gave the work a physical tension that a gallery wall would have removed.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.
A painting made in public
The gallery’s photographs show looping figures and faces accumulating across the surface. Red and blue passages spread through the middle, while darker outlines and a yellow corner pull the eye back across the composition. White marks cut through the colour, leaving parts of the canvas open and making others feel crowded. Individual characters become harder to separate as the layers build.
Seen from below, that loose drawing becomes something bodily: the artist’s reach, the height of the platform and the distance between spectators and painting all remain legible. The photographs of the crowd are useful here. They bring the scale back to people, rather than leaving the canvas as an isolated image on a screen.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.
For a publication rooted in work encountered outside, the interesting point is the temporary use of the site. A car park became a place to watch an artwork take shape, with the work suspended against the city rather than permanently attached to it. The event also made visible the equipment and labour that large outdoor projects often keep outside the finished photograph.
Saatchi Yates has linked the project to a charitable print release. According to the gallery, proceeds from the Slawn Crane Painting limited print will go to Art of Wishes and Make-A-Wish UK. That announcement concerns the print, rather than a stated sale of the suspended original.
Take a look at the photographs throughout, and see Saatchi Yates’ event documentation for footage of the painting in progress.
Images: Saatchi Yates / Slawn.