The Life and Work of Brian Barnes in Battersea
By Jeanne Rathbone
Brian Barnes was a celebrated muralist, a leading light in the community arts movement and a local political activist in Battersea where he lived in Carey Gardens. Warm-hearted, funny, outspoken and a hugely gifted artist, he created murals around south London for more than 45 years.
Self portrait
Familiar figure and determined campaigner
To many in Battersea, Brian was a familiar figure with a distinctive very, very long beard who produced colourful murals and was a determined campaigner on ensuring developments, especially Battersea Power Station, were to the benefit of the community. Brian and I, amongst other community representatives, were elected to serve on Wandsworth Council’s Battersea Power Station community panels in 1987 when John Broome acquired the site with over-ambitious and unrealistic plans. After he had taken off the roof and side wall to remove the turbines and boilers he was bankrupt and the saga began of the building and site been left derelict. This was the start of Brian’s decades long campaigning on the monolith in his neighbourhood.
His friend and colleague Steve Lobb published the book The Murals of Brian Barnes and wrote Brian’s obituary, which I also used when I conducted Brian’s funeral service as a Humanist celebrant. London Blue Badge guide Chris Van Hayden blogged about Brian’s Battersea murals, having been brought up on Thessaly Road near Carey Gardens where Brian and Aileen lived.
Formal art training
He was born in Farnborough, Kent, raised in nearby St Paul’s Cray and began a course at Ravensbourne College of Art (now Ravensbourne University London) in 1961, leading to a national diploma in design. There he met Aileen, who was studying fabric design, and they married in 1964. Brian stood out as a determined realist painter and went on to study at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1969 with beautifully composed and detailed work. Brian taught art for some years in Tulse Hill School, where he painted a bus with the boys.
Moving to Battersea the couple found a leftwing group of friends initially at a meeting of BRAG - Battersea Redevelopment Action Group- initiated by the wonderful Ernest Rodker, a Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Committee 100 activist. Brian became involved, campaigning for better social provision in housing, parks and jobs and protesting against rent rises and the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station for the wealthy. The aim was to ensure that it wasn’t just turned into luxury flats but included affordable housing and community projects. The group also opposed the council’s sell-off of social housing, believing that council developments and initiatives should be public and for the community, rather than private and for commercial interests. They leafleted, knocked on doors, and held public meetings.
Art as a vehicle for social concerns
The necessity of creating art expressing social concerns gave Brian a new direction, and a bolder style for his work. In 1973 he began printing silkscreen posters for campaigns at his home. Demand grew and by 1977 his print workshop was producing hundreds of posters for the community.
Then came the murals. His first, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1976-78), was vast, and was painted with 90 volunteers on Morgan Crucible’s wall, near Battersea Bridge. On the “good” end were pictures of socialist goals, in the centre a “rainbow” broom swept away the capitalists’ failure. It became a popular landmark. A year later the wall was demolished. Protesters arrived in thousands, Battersea Bridge was closed and the artist arrested.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Around this time Brian got funding for a community arts project from the Greater London Council which enabled him to secure premises and to employ other artists. The project moved into the Doddington and Rollo Community Association (DRCA) workshops after a couple of years and provided professional artwork for many community groups.
Larger than Life
More large-scale gable-end murals followed: sunny evocations like Day at the Seaside and Battersea in Perspective which is on the gable end of the disused Haberdashers pub in Dagnall Street. Then anti-war murals: Nuclear Dawn in Brixton, with its threatening skeleton, and Riders of the Apocalypse in New Cross, featuring world leaders riding rockets around a besieged world, above a tender rendering of messages at Greenham Common. There were many more murals for creches, nurseries, schools, towns, housing estates and railway stations.
The Stockwell War Memorial, was the work to which he returned often. It is a joyful mural with many images, dedicated to the fallen in the world wars, and celebrating local residents such as Vincent Van Gogh, Bond actor Roger Moore and the World War II special operations agent Violette Szabo, as well as the Windrush immigrants who spent their first night in Britain nearby. In 2001 the addition of Szabo’s image was revealed by her daughter Tania and by actress, author and wildlife campaigner Virginia McKenna who played the role of Violette Szabo in the movie "Carve her Name with Pride.”
Stockwell War Memorial
The Murals: Battersea in Perspective
Chris Van Hayden wrote of Barnes, “Few people are as passionate about the Battersea area of London than muralist Brian Barnes MBE, who has been leaving his artistic touch on derelict industrial carcasses and council housing estates, some in plain sight and others in the most inconspicuous of locations. He first gained recognition in 1976 with his 267 foot long mural: Battersea: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, on Battersea Bridge Road, which depicted a brush sweeping away the industrial dilapidation along Battersea’s riverfront, and replacing it with a colourful utopian vision of social prosperity for the local community.
Two of his Battersea works which still stand are not so large but are immediately recognisable by their bright colour palette, his acknowledgement of the old masters, his pacifist social commentary and the numerous amusing allusions to Battersea’s heritage. His Battersea in Perspective, painted in 1988 on the side of a pub, shows a bird’s eye view of the district with Battersea Park’s Peace Pagoda centre stage. Left of this is the Battersea Power Station which is currently being re-developed. Barnes is a founder of the Battersea Power Station Community Group, which has been campaigning for its preservation since 1983 when it was finally decommissioned.
Receding in the distance is a modern cityscape, perhaps a reference to the vision of Battersea’s radical council, which went to great lengths to replace Georgian and Victorian developments with housing estates for the area’s largely working-class population. In contrast, barely noticeable beneath the portraits in the foreground, are the elegant historic mansions and houses of Chelsea, a distant world from the Battersea riverfront. The River Thames was not only a physical barrier but also a social one until the late twentieth century.”
Framed between the bridges are portraits of radical politicians, artists and pioneering aviators, all with links to Battersea’s past. These include pan Africanist John Archer, Britain’s first elected black mayor, London Docks Strike leader John Burns who became MP for Battersea, socialist, suffragette and Irish Nationalist Charlotte Despard, whose plaque is on 177 Lavender Hill, now the Battersea Labour Party HQ, pilot and aircraft maker Hilda Hewlett whose Battersea Society plaque is in Vardens Road, Pre-Raphaelite artist Evelyn de Morgan whose The Evening Star Above the Sea depicts Venus in the top right corner of the mural. Her connection with Battersea is commemorated with a Battersea Society plaque on Old Battersea House where her sister Wilhelmina Stirling housed the De Morgan Collection. Also depicted are other radical Battersea politicians – Shapurji Saklatvala Battersea’s Communist MP in the 20s, Douglas Jay MP elected in 1946 and Lord Alf Dubs who was Battersea MP and is a campaigner for child refugees as he was a kindertransport child refugee himself.
Hovering above the cityscape is the decoration pattern of the Battersea Shield now on display at the British Museum. This was found in the Thames during the construction of Chelsea Bridge in 1857. The bridge itself was part of an exciting new development, the Royal Park of Battersea.
Finally, the balloon is a reminder of aircraft manufactures the Short brothers, who started their business by making balloons for Charles Royce and other aviation pioneers in the arches beneath the railway lines flanking the Battersea Power Station, a convenient location in close proximity to the Gas Works. They are commemorated with an English Heritage plaque there.
Battersea in Perspective
The Murals: A Brief History of Time
A more recent work is A Brief History of Time, hidden away in Carey Gardens Estate, close to Brian’s home where he and Aileen brought up their two children Eloise and Glenn. This mural shows a grand hourglass symbolising time running out for the local community, increasingly pushed out by gentrification and the rise of living costs in the area: notice the recurring Battersea Power Station in the top bulb. The hourglass is crowned by Michelangelo’s depiction of God from ‘The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Plants’ in the Sistine Chapel, and above this is Pink Floyd’s flying pig from the cover of their Animals album, which made the Power Station a recognisable landmark across the world in 1977.
The aviation theme also recurs with a Sopwith Camel biplane and the even more fantastical Star Wars spacecrafts and Death Star in the top right corner – Barnes must have been a fan! Stephen Hawkins makes an appearance floating in the left top corner, perhaps enjoying a mural named after his bestseller science book. The fantastical theme is picked up again with characters from the Wizard of Oz on the left of the hourglass, whilst on the opposite right are the Emerald Towers which are currently springing up in Nine Elms around the new American Embassy, sadly economically out of reach to most locals.
Below the hourglass we see the Who’s legendary drummer Keith Moon dressed as a lollipop man in allusion to a campaign he launched for a pedestrian crossing to protect children at a dangerous junction in Thessaly Road. This was just a few yards away from Ramport Studios where the band was recording their Quadrophenia rock opera. Brian successfully campaigned for the green Wandsworth Council plaque there. The rest of the Who also make an appearance above a man standing on the bottom right corner: Nick Wood, the pioneering architect who designed the Carey Gardens Estate. A much-loved figure in Battersea, Wood bucked the high-rise housing trend of the 1970s instead creating ‘council estates that did not look like council estates.”
A Brief History of Time
Recent walk incorporating A Brief History of Time
Also in Battersea is the much-loved Chesterton School Mural. Due to construction work on the school ground, the top part of the mural was damaged and needed repair in 2019. There is a video of Brian by the Battersea-based company Spectacle, an independent video production company and social enterprise. They have recorded many interviews with Brian. Indeed, there are many videos of Brian online including the Chocolate Films one “Nine Elms Past and Present.” Chocolate Films are now based in Nine Elms and the film can be found here.
Brian Barnes with the image of GK Chesterton on the Chesterton school mural
Brian Barnes
Join the walk to celebrate Brian Barnes
In 2005 Brian was appointed MBE for his services to the Battersea community. Brian died in November 2021 and there are plans to commemorate his life and work with a walk on July 15th 2023 starting at 12.00. We will walk down the length of Thessaly Road, starting at the Wandsworth Road junction and finishing at Battersea Power Station. This will coincide with the Happy Streets Festival. There is also a presentation to be hosted by the Royal College of Art, which he had attended, and which is opposite the site of his first large mural by Battersea Bridge, making it an appropriate place to celebrate Brian Barnes—a Battersea treasure.