The Social Advertising Board, Station South, Levenshulme, 2020–2022
Artvert: A Social Advertising Board at Station South
Artvert is an advertising board at Station South in Levenshulme. Selling advertising space on the front paid for artists to show work, and for local community groups to advertise, on the back, and helped fund the station itself. I designed the concept and the branding, and made the first artwork for the back under Moderate Realism.
The Idea
Station South needed ways to pay for itself, and Artvert was one of them: an advertising board on the site where selling space on the front would pay for artists to show work, and for local community groups to advertise, on the back. Commercial advertising funding art and community use on the same board.
The board was not built for it. An old advertising hoarding had stood on the site for years, and we took it on rather than putting up something new.
The Sign
It started with a sign. The first Station South nameboard, drawn in the shape of an old railway station sign and set on a photograph of a rug by Lazerian, the artist from Denton. The earliest piece of the identity that would carry across onto the board.
The Board
With the hoarding taken on, the front went to work selling space, Wheels in Motion among the adverts it carried. A billboard on a piece of Levenshulme with a new job: earning money for the station behind it, and for what went on its other side.
The Artwork
The back was the point of it. The first piece was a commission for Moderate Realism, my own art practice. I worked through a run of geometric designs, op-art hexagons and cubes and black-and-white swirls, before settling on a row of interlocking impossible triangles in red, blue, green and purple.
Something for the street to look at that was not trying to sell it anything, funded by the advertising on the other side.
The Social Advertising Board
Finished, the board read ARTVERT, THE SOCIAL ADVERTISING BOARD on one face, with a line pointing to Station South, and carried the artwork on the other. I designed the name, the branding and the front, made the first piece for the back, and made a short video advert for it too.
It came down in 2022. The board sat between the garden and the sun, and taking it out gave the terrace its light back. A fair ending for a thing that had always been about making a piece of ground work harder.
Commission a Similar Project
If you have a site, a wall or a structure that could earn its keep and give something back at the same time, a board, a hoarding or a piece of public design that funds what goes on around it, get in touch.
Questions
What was Artvert?
An advertising board at Station South in Levenshulme. Selling advertising space on the front paid for artists to show work and for local community groups to advertise on the back, and helped fund the station. It ran from 2020 to 2022.
Where was it?
On the Station South site in Levenshulme, Manchester, on an existing advertising hoarding that was taken on for the project rather than newly built.
What was on the back?
Artwork and community use, funded by the advertising on the front. The first piece was a commission for Moderate Realism, Mark’s own art practice: a set of interlocking geometric triangles.
Is the board still there?
No. It was taken down in 2022 so it stopped blocking the sun on the station’s terrace garden.
From the Journal
The Board, in the Making
Dated entries following Artvert, from the first Station South sign to the finished social advertising board and the artwork on its back.