In making this work I would like to acknowledge the artists that have informed these paintings, from William Hogarth and Edward Burra to LS Lowry and Jock Mc Fadyen.

I wanted to find a word that summed up my journeys through the city, one that would link all of this work together. Transmetropolitan, a borrowed song title, seemed to be a clunky and awkward enough word for the job. From the beginning I struggled with the scale and the ambition of this new work. I was trying to capture the feeling of turning a corner and seeing a new scene so very different from the one you saw half a mile down the road- trying to show the schizophrenic character of our city.  One of the things that helped me was to begin drawing each composition with a circle as opposed to the triangles that I used last year. For the first time in the Mile End paintings I was able to paint buildings from life, using a head torch to paint the night scene.

As with all my shows there are personal symbols that run through each painting. I discover the symbol as the work progresses. This year’s symbol began, I thought, as a reference to the renaissance painters that inform my work. Or as a reference to the way I’ve been hopping from location to location, trying to look down from above as well as up from the gutter.

In another way this year’s symbol seemed to emphasise my belief in the city as a place of hope containing all the dreams of those who are born here and those who have flocked to the city in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families for 2000 years or more. Settlers and natives alike have all left their mark on the fabric of our city and our institutions. Some dreams take flight while others are sadly doomed to remain on the ground. This work aims to celebrate the people of London, never to denigrate them.

And then as I was working on the last Brixton painting it struck me that all of these ideas were indeed a part of the meaning of the work, but in the end I began to see the symbol as one that reflects my own transmetropolitan journeys: I realised that what this city allows me to do is to transcend the small thing that is myself, and to become a part of the bigger picture. 

Thanks to GX Gallery and Davide Mengoli.

Ed Gray

Bermondsey, May 2008