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A pale pink construction hoarding stands on a city street, featuring several abstract red painted rectangles. Behind it, a building displays a faded sign that reads “CHARRINGTONS”.

Photography: Daniel Ginns looks to find the beauty in painted-over graffiti

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Date
18 September 2013

Artist Daniel Ginns is fresh out of a degree in illustration at Camberwell, but as it turns out he’s a dab hand with a camera too. His series Rothko Walls records the walls in and around London which used to boast graffiti, and now display only the “free-floating geometric shapes” which remain after it has been badly concealed by a halfhearted paint-job. The new layer of paint is often “only a slightly different shade of colour from that of the original wall,” he explains, “creating imagery that could be considered reminiscent of the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.”

We saw a similar idea captured a couple of years back by artist Chris Seddon’s book Correctionism, which just goes to show how far-reaching and aesthetically reminiscent of revered painters the phenomenon really is. There’s something heart-warmingly defiant in the idea that, by trying to remove one form of self expression, painters country-wide are actually creating another, which other artists are then capturing themselves; it just goes to show that you don’t need to erect billboards bearing masterpieces around a city to see art everywhere.

A white building corner features a bricked-up window and a dark, weathered door. Beside the door, a large pink wooden hoarding is marked with a thick, horizontal red stripe.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

Dry, tangled vines climb across a pale yellow wall and a dark wooden trellis. To the left, the wall transitions into weathered red brick.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

A blue and white construction hoarding stands in front of a brick building and a leafy tree. Patches of white paint and remnants of torn posters mark the blue surface.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

A blue construction hoarding with irregular white paint patches stands in front of a derelict brick building. The building has boarded-up windows and a weathered facade, partially obscured by bare winter trees.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

A weathered concrete wall stands behind a grey pavement and a narrow strip of road. A white wooden fence runs along the top of the wall, and a single tree trunk grows from the pavement on the right.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

A light blue rectangular patch of paint covers a section of a dark blue wall. A single metal bollard stands in the foreground on a concrete surface.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

An abstract painting in deep blue and purple tones. A lighter blue, irregular shape is layered across the centre, with a thin horizontal band stretching across the width of the canvas.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

A weathered wooden fence stretches across the frame, cast in the long, dark shadows of bare tree branches. Behind the fence, the roof of a brick building and a sign reading “Sulzer” are visible against a clear sky.
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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

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Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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