Here we are playing catch up with a striking work placed up a few months back by Street Artist Aspire for a community initiative we are involved with in Selhurst around the back of Selhurst Station to brighten up the area in the form of some Street Art. This fantastic and stark artwork titled ‘Reduced’ presents a design influenced by the increasing decline of habitat in Borneo to deforestation which has lost 30% of its forest over the last four decades, it is for this reason that Aspire has included a large discount reduced sticker on top of the artwork, suggesting that anything is for sale no matter what is being lost in the process. One of the main reasons for such extensive deforestation in Borneo is that the state has cleared 50% of its original jungle, largely to make way for crops that make palm oil, a product found in most of our everyday items, as illustrated in this work with the icing and sprinkles set atop the design, provoking metaphors to how the real issue is being sugar coated or covered with a sweet lid to hide the overwhelming destruction behind it that many people either wish not to acknowledge or are just unaware about.

Of course the first thing most people notice when stood before this painting is the large Bornean Orangutan in the foreground, Orangutan’s are one of many species suffering immensely from the extensive deforestation across Borneo and is a species with which we share 97% of our DNA. Through this work Aspire sets to question whether humanity will look back on the success of a such a species or on its blighted existence, as we share our DNA with this species their story is entwined with ours. Accompanying the Orangutan is a Common Green Magpie, another species that is suffering the effect of loss of habitat across Borneo. Aspire has set to draw inspiration from one of the UK’s official war artists from the First World War Paul Nash who is most well known for the stark images of Ypres depicted as a wasteland devoid of people he produced. It is this sense of loss that influenced the backdrop of the fading forest behind the images central figure, and to great effect we might add.

We of course have to say a massive thank you to CASSA as well as a big thank you to the team at Network Rail for supporting such initiatives and all their help on this project and who both have trusted the artists to do what they do best by giving them free reign to do their thing for the community to enjoy. As well as a really big THANK YOU to Frankie Strand for coming to down to support this initiative and for leaving such a fun artwork in the process. This superb work can be found in Newhaven Road, Selhurst, just behind the back of Selhurst Station.

Aspire at work.

Aspire at work.

Aspire at work.

Aspire at work.

Aspire at work.

Work done, Aspire signs his piece.

The striking and stark finished piece.