Goodbye Petunia, you'll be sorely missed...

The other day I happened to stumble across the last picture I ever took of Petunia before she met a fate one can only guess of. The poor girl was just one part of Airside’s sprawling contribution to Designer’s Block, a street-wide exhibition that was part of the 2007 London Design Festival.

Through the sun and rain of a typically inconsistent British summer, Petunia welcomed guests to Airside’s outdoor installation, which featured The Big Bang, one of the few illustrations produced for Airside that I’ve been honoured to put my name on.

My contribution to the project was the illustration of the mural, the brief requiring an image that would appeal to an audience at two extreme scales. The resulting orgastic mural featured massive planetoid men, who hid peep-holes amongst hundreds of tiny buildings covering their skin. When pressed to give the lusty scene a title, I could only explain it looked like a ‘big bang’, and thus the illustration’s title was found.

The Big Bang, 40 feet of smut (Image: Airside)

Anticipating the 2007 London Design festival, Designer’s Block approached Airside to contribute to a project aiming to bring some much needed colour to Highbury Studios’ vandalised retail spaces.

A typical wall before...

...and after

Highbury Studios was a classic example of a new city living development: all concierge, but no soul. The shops and cafés that appeared on the architect’s proposals were still a long way off, and as you can see, the area’s other artists seemed very keen to show everyone just whose patch they were on.

One of the tamer boards may I add

Designer’s Block’s ingenious idea was to offer the unfinished retail spaces to various design studios around London to do what they could with, the idea being that even the dullest breeze block interiors could be transformed with some love and a lick of paint: redemption, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen style. The resultant exhibition would subsequently provide colour and vitally needed occupation until the retailers were ready to move in.

Can you see the peep-holes?

Through the peep-hole, one of Airside's dancing characters in action

Airside’s response was to create a massive interactive mural, that through the power of bluetooth technology, allowed visitors to download bizarre dancing characters to their mobile phones. For those brave enough to clamber over the hawthorn bushes, the mural also had several secret peep-holes offering yet more animated surprises.

The Big Bang, detail (Image: Airside)

The Big Bang, detail (Image: Airside)

Nothing speeds a print job along like a giant yellow bottom

If I’ve learnt anything from this project, it’s that a giant yellow bottom can lift even the most laborious of print jobs. And with 40 feet of similar sauciness, the residents of Highbury Studios certainly got an eyeful.

So what of Petunia? By the second week of the exhibition she was gone, stolen by an over-sexed resident. Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy.