stencilled bindweed graffiti with QR code
148cm x 170cm, 2025

Commissioned as part of The Belonging project to draw attention to the services Manchester University provides to support staff and students with unseen disabilities and chronic health conditions.

Installed across three locations in the Stopford Building, School of Medical Sciences, University of Manchester, 2025

Coming soon:
Installation views
Commissioner’s text

ALT Text
ID1. A pair of stencilled stems 1.7m tall and 1.48m wide: On the left, three stencilled stems loop backwards then upwards in an anti-clockwise direction. The paint of the first two is a muted green, the third a reddish pink. The stencil cut outs create the impression that the stems are twining around each other, with pointy tendrils shooting out on both sides.

This three-stem stencil is repeated on the right, this time with the second stem picked out in the reddish pink, which focusses attention on a different intertwining of the stems, and creates a sense of forward movement.

ID2. The same pair of stems are covered in long heart-shaped leaves in the stem green and in a dark - almost black - green. Muted green buds appear at the end of some of the tendrils, larger ones at the base and smaller ones towards the top. The leaves form a similar pattern. They are alike in shape but not all the same, and repeat across both stem clusters in similar but not identical ways.

ID3. The leafy curving stems are now covered with flowers and buds. The green sepals are each overlaid with an off-white pointy lozenge-shaped flower bud, with magnolia ribbing. The left cluster of stems has one open bell-shaped flower half way up, hanging in the curve of the vine. The shape of the flower is accentuated by a stencil shadow in the green. Its head points backwards and slightly down.

The right-hand cluster has two flowers, also bell or funnel-shaped. The first a large flower with a heavy shadow at the base of the stem, the head pointing back but slightly upwards. The second a small flower at the top of the vine facing upwards and forwards. A QR code in the reddish pink is located at the base of the vine. The combined colours of the graffiti hint at camo.

The completed graffiti evokes the familiar sight of the common bindweeds found almost everywhere across cultivated land.