RESIDENT HAS WORK PUBLISHED

In 2013, Jo Plimmer, an engagement manager working on a contemporary art project called Future Perfect talked to Garth about the history of the area. She thought perhaps some of Garth's photographs and drawings could be incorporated into a curtain in Hengrove Community Centre. Garth produced his work and what Jo saw prompted a remarkable journey to produce "Murdered By Straight Lines"

Between 2006 and 2013 Garth had produced a body of work mapping out details of his life, spent almost entirely living and working in and around Hengrove. Using A4 paper and coloured pencils his work documents his life from his birth in the late 1930s, through evacuation, through National Service, through massive societal changes. The drawings are intricate and detailed, many telling stories in cartoon fashion, many are drawing of houses he knew, drawings of his teachers' houses, drawings of furniture he grew up with, of bathing in a tin bath; the drawings and the words are beautiful and poignant. 

And why "Murdered By Straight Lines"? Garth said that "that was what his art teacher used to say about his drawings. He didn't like the way I always used a ruler"