The Harold Hill mosaic, Romford

The Harold Hill Library mosaic, Romford, (north east London) was created in 2003 by Living Space Arts. The artists included Carrie Richards, who is responsible for the Treatment Rooms project.

The theme of this mosaic, on the wall of a library, is "recycling". It incorporates various kinds of salvaged materials, from broken tiles to household objects such old toys, bicycle chains, printed circuit boards and bottle tops. These are built into the images in ingenious ways. It's not uncommon to see found objects in mosaics being used to represent other objects. Here, however, an old Ventolin inhaler is being used as a real object by a lifesize mosaic figure. The background to this scene shows the air we breathe being polluted by chimneys (made from shower hoses). The overall design has strong urban references, for example, the graffiti-style lettering executed in broken tiles. Photographed May 2006: Google map

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