If I were you I would get on to the council about it now, before it gets out of hand. Either that or the Arts Council who, in some way, may be financing it.
The thing is, I have just started a campaign of flyposting on unauthorised sites across Birmingham.
The flyposting will go on until the middle of June and it is your rates that are going to be spent on cleaning up the mess I leave behind.
I love flyposting. I love its aesthetic appeal, especially when it gets tatty. But I seem to be the only one. Even those paying to have them put up don’t seem to like the look of them.
They just seem to be interested in the ticket sales they may generate.
Then I also love reading them. Usually, nowadays, it is the names of techno DJs playing some club night. I have no interest in these DJs or the nights they are promoting.
It is enough for me to just read the poster and admire the way that it has already been partially covered by a poster promoting a demonstration by the Socialist Workers’ Party or a visit by The Russian State Circus.
It almost feels comforting in this age of social networking that something as primitive as flyposting is still considered a viable medium to promote an event.
Most Read
My relationship with flyposting started in earnest in the autumn of 1977 when I was living in Liverpool. I was in a band called Big In Japan. Our manager ran a club in the city called Eric’s.
I supplemented my income by spending a day a week flyposting the city with posters advertising the bands that were going to be playing at Eric’s.
Whatever the weather I would set off in the morning with 100 posters, a bucket of wallpaper paste and a brush.
After doing a whole wall I would cross the street so that I could just stand there and admire my work. I would then have to take a photo of the wall to prove it had been done.
A week later I would be back again to cover them all over with the next batch of posters. There was something so pure about it. Even, dare I say, organic.
And then there was the rush that I would get when I would find a new virgin wall that was in a perfect location. Bus routes into the city centre were always considered the best sites.
Even better if it was along the route the band would drive into Liverpool. Bands would always play better if they had seen lots of posters for themselves.
Don’t miss
By the summer of ’78 my professional life as a fly-poster was over.
But the urge to fly-post was not sated. And along with graffiti it is something that I have returned to numerous times over the decades.
But not because someone was paying me to put their posters up – these posters have always been mine.
Last year I was defacing the walls of Oxford to promote Ragwort Week.
In Birmingham, over these coming weeks, I have 100 posters to flypost around your city. They are in 10 sets of 10. Each set is identical. Each set depicts me painting my head black and white.
Why I am doing this head painting is too complicated for me to understand let alone try to put into words, so I won’t bother trying.
The first 10 went up last Thursday under the rail bridge on Heath Mill Lane around the back of the Custard Factory.
The authorities had them down by Saturday morning. But not before I took a photograph of them – so much easier these days with a mobile phone.
This week I will be putting up a couple more sets of 10.
Now here’s the twist, I would like to invite you to do the documentation for me.
If you see them please photograph them on your phone and send the picture to my email address bill@penkilnburn.com. I will then have these printed and pinned to the gallery wall of Eastside Projects.
By June 14, the person who has photographed the most sets gets a signed set of the 10 posters for free from me.
The winner can either flypost them themselves or keep them as an art investment. I understand investing in art is more secure than bricks and mortar.
• Bill Drummond is for The Birmingham Post as part of his