Pilgrimage to Lawrence Hill Roundabout

I travel from Taunton to Bristol and Lawrence Hill Roundabout by train. The short journey from Bristol Templemeads to the Roundabout is also visually interesting. The overwhelming visual stimulation of an urban/city environment is particularly relevant in Bristol given its international reputation for street art.

The designs which interest me are found everywhere; the signage, the esoteric and apparently non-sensical graffiti, the clutter, the posters advertising local events and political affiliations and the graphical characteristics of structures.

Allied to this is the sense of impermanence and change of urban expression, its ephemerality. What also interests me is the physical degredation of ‘culture’, its organic atrophy, and its sense that there is a timescale embedded within its multiple layers. I often think it is a form of palimpsest.

Lawrence Hill Roundabout and its graffitied and layered underpasses does not exist in isolation. All around it in east Bristol is an environment of a similar visual nature. Here is a collection of images of ‘signs’ ( maybe semiotics) I encounter on my journey from Bristol Templemeads to Lawrence Hill Roundabout.