In Autumn 2013, two large billboards on Bath Road feaured work by Italian photographer Carmine Mauro Daprile. The billboards popped up in between the existing advertising panels, and bore no logos or slogans. Instead, viewers were presented with two photographs featuring fantastical characters set against startling visions of the future.

These two photographs #29 Wake up Bristol and #34 were commissioned especially and were shot during the In Between Time festival in February 2013 as part of a city centre 'cosplayer flashmob'. Cosplay (short for costume play) is where participants take on the role and look of a character out of a work of fiction. The artist Daprile is interested in real environments which appear staged or changed by the presence of unusual figures or circumstances and working with cosplayers allowed him to interrupt everyday experiences and manipulate our perceptions of realities. 

The chosen landscapes depict buildings such as Temple Meads train station and the derelict sorting office presenting the rapidly changing area behind the billboards, The Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone.

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The Moon project

The Moon wass part of a series of Bristol Temple Quarter commissions, coordinated by Watershed, Knowle West Media Centre and MAYK, with support from Bristol City Council and Arts Council England. The projects were designed to pop up, excite and re-invent perceptions and potentials. 

Image by Carmine Mauro Daprile

Ended in September 2013

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