Project Morrinho at Brazil Festival
Southbank, London
3 August, 2010
London's South Bank is currently host to, amongst other things, a festival celebrating Brazilian culture. I stumbled on this unexpectedly but was very glad I did.
Project Morrinho is a centre piece of the exhibitions on the terrace outside the Southbank Centre. The art display consists of hundreds of painted bricks to create distinctive favelas. In Brazilian Portuguese, a favela is a slum or shanty town - the models created are by residents of these favela in Rio and uniquely the artists behind it all are young people.
In creating these replica towns, the young artists used their creations for escapism and enacted roleplays of their daily lives within the recreated environment. The aims of the project revolve around providing support to the poorest and most in need residents of Rio. The installation in London is part of a series of international projects that Morrinho work on, predominately in North America.
The favela model on the South Bank recreates famous monuments on the London skyline, notably St Paul's, Big Ben and the London Eye. Brixton Market features as does nearby Stockwell. This favela was built in collaboration with young people from London offering them the chance to reproduce a small scale model of their local surroundings.
Today, 600,000 children in London live in poverty - approximately 39% of the child population.* Standards of living for such a high proportion of young people need rectification but often the problems go unnoticed, ignored. The efforts of children's charities across the capital raise awareness and need support. Project Morrinho is an example of a means of taking the harsh realities of poverty and placing them squarely in public view. The Southbank Centre and its surroundings are areas of affluence and high art - this simple idea of the painted bricks becomes highly poignant and in the time I spent in the area dozens and dozens of people stopped to take a look.
Project Morrinho's website calls itself a small revolution - the opportunities it provides are hugely admirable. The project is exciting because it gives a voice to the vulnerable and normally less fortunate. The colourful paint used on the bricks, the models of famous landmarks and the spirit of the Morrinho endeavour come together to make a truly unique piece of art on the streets of London.
For more information please visit: www.morrinho.com.
*Statistics taken from www.londonchildpoverty.org.uk.
Saw project Mourinho the other day. Here is my list of things that disappointed me:
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B) Second of all, may have been done by kids, but it was lazy. Half the time instead of even building the houses they just used a brick. As a house. I was doing that back in reception and din't get an exhibition
C) When I stood there and said 'Well this is a bit shit, innit' some woman gave me a dirty look. I expect the ambient atmosphere of the art I see to be open to all discussion, where one can be free to express. It wasn't.
All in all, as these things go, Project Mourihno was a let down. For similar exhibitions with a little more in them, I would recommend the football museum at Wembley Stadium, or for those of a mincier disposition, the tennis museum at Wimbledon.