Andrew Paul

Spicing Up Construction Sites | Post No Bills, Post Pretty Art aims to beautify the Mayfair Hotel.

Anyone who frequents downtown Edmonton is accustomed by now to passing the dilapidated Mayfair Hotel on the corner of 108th Street and Jasper Avenue. Either that, or they don’t notice it at all, treating it like a crumbling ghost, a structural apparition that has been closed off and veiled in plywood.

It’s exactly this perspective that Eric Cheung desires to change. Where others may see an eyesore, he sees a canvas.

“I wanted to create an urban moment,” Cheung says.

The project, called Post No Bills, Post Pretty Art, takes the form of several graffiti murals that
Cheung has added to the boards now covering the windows of the hotel. It’s being developed by AT.AW, a group of three “urban interventionists,” of which Cheung is a member.

Currently operating in Edmonton, Toronto, and London, Ont., the collective seeks to create a more dynamic urban atmosphere through independent street art.

“AT.AW [stands for] any time, anywhere. Or if you Google it, it’s supposedly American Truckers at War,” laughs the soft-spoken Cheung, sporting a white shirt covered in flecks of multi-coloured paint. “I come from primarily an urban design background — that’s where my primary motivation comes from. To see a derelict building like that, it’s appalling. It’s dead space.”

Educated in architecture in Halifax before becoming interested in urban design during his time in Toronto and London, the Edmonton native received inspiration from another local temporary urban art project called Make It Not Suck, which had its first outing in 2007. Remnants of several of the pieces from subsequent years can still be seen along the walkway across the street from the Mayfair, where Cheung is now continuing his work.

But the urban interventionist didn’t get permission to put the art up, which technically qualifies it as illegal graffiti, according to Don Belanger, the program manager for Capital City Cleanup which deals with the city’s graffiti cleanup.

“The city has no issues if the owner’s permission was obtained by the artist because then it’s street art,” Belanger says. “As long as it’s not offensive or anything, then go for it. But you need that permission.”

But even if it may be destined for removal, Cheung explains the work is meant to be temporary and
transitory, as his ultimate vision will see other local artists adding to what he’s initiated.

“The work will come down eventually, either by authority or just falling apart,” he says, “but it creates a vibrancy or momentum, that artists will just keep going up to the boards and creating new pieces. That’s the ideal urban experiment, and I think it’s a good one [for] Edmonton. There’s always a concern that there’s not enough of an arts scene or that it’s not physical enough, so this is an opportunity for that to happen. Whether or not other people wish to take this up is the challenge.”

And if Cheung gets his way, The Mayfair may soon look more like a cultural mosaic than a forgotten landmark.

“[The art is] simply about an experience,” Cheung says. “Sure, you might be walking by there and see it for two seconds, but it’s there. It’s something better than a
blank wall.”