“Artmongers' contribution to the life of communities is invaluable. They
have the knack of making art really work in a way that is inclusive and
gives local people ownership of the results. Sometimes funny, sometimes
puzzling, their work is always intriguing and stimulating."
Paul Milnes
"Never met a finer pair of honest geniuses in my whole life. I like to
think of them as the sooty and sweep of the deconstructed urban expressionist
revolution."
Andrew Winter – Source Communications
“I lived in Deptford for more than 2 years, and from the beginning I could
see a nice touch of arts all over the place. You can see the major development
of visual arts in the South East, but specially in Deptford, and there's
many young and not so young artists around. I was lucky as I had the chance
of meeting these funny mongers (Patito and Jules), and later work with them
on the project Hands Hoarding on Besson Street. Not only working with them
was a good experience, but also meeting a lot of people from Deptford, all
of them putting a piece for the result I believe most of us know...”
Mathias Wilkendorf
“With their fresh take and optimistic view of what's possible Artmongers
transform the mundane into the magical and make the world a little more
inviting”
Catherine Shovlin - Director, Customer Interpreter Ltd
“I would like to say that I find your unique and innovative, Artmongers
are an asset to the visual arts community in Deptford.”
Mathew Coupper - Deptford X Manager/Curator
“Su propuesta es el resultado de mas de 10 años de trabajo intenso en torno
de la versatilidad del arte, de su adecuación a nuevos desafíos sin perder
la originalidad de toda creación y el poder transformador que tienen las
grandes creaciones del espíritu humano. Han congeniado un problema acuciante
(la basura, su reciclado y el porvenir de nuestra casa común -la tierra-)
con la creación artística entendida de manera dinámica, móvil, puertas afuera.
Es una creación de avant garde. Del siglo XXII”
Renato Rabbi Baldi
“Patricio Forrester, born in Argentina and now living and working in London,
forms with Julian Sharples the creative duo, Artmongers. Artmongers have
carried out many imaginative public works and community projects in the
Deptford area of south London. With The Fabric of Society project (2007)
they introduced an unusually tender and responsive procedure into the often
intrusive and heavy-handed scenario of public arts. Charged to make an outdoor
mural for a café and rather under-used community centre in South East London,
Forrester asked locals to lend him a piece of fabric from their homes that
they particularly treasured or which had a meaning for them.
These were then photographed to the same scale and digitally printed as
vertical fragments, or swatches, of cloth standing in a row. The upright
panels formed a long, multicoloured mural snaking around the exterior of
the building. An unashamedly decorative display from a distance, when you
approached close you could read a small piece of writing on each panel:
the person’s account of what the fabric meant to them. What an extraordinary
variety of stories people had to tell! And what different emotions the fabrics
aroused. The poetic device the artists employed, this unexpected relationship
between the fragment of cloth and people’s lives - not a literal procedure
but an analogical way of producing individual portraits - was what made
this work an outstanding, original piece of public and community art. ”
Guy Brett