Bryan Eccleshall

abbey road

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The are over 130 Abbey Roads in England. I have been spending the last few years photographing all of them. Aside from one on Tresco (on the Scilly Isles), I completed the collection on 26th May 2011.

This piece started as a way of returning to art making using collecting as a methodology. I was living, when I started, in Abbey Wood in South London. There was an Abbey Road close to us and I wondered how many more there were in the country. For a brief while it could have been Downing Street or Coronation Street. I figured that there would be too few of the former and too many of the latter.

It's grown out of a piece about first among equals into something that plays with the idea of similarity and difference, whilst doubling as a sort of portrait of England.

Why just England? Well, the famous one - the first among the equals - is English, as were the people who made it famous. If I did Wales, which would be possible, I'd have to do Scotland (trickier, based on where I live) and Northern Ireland (almost impossible). Perhaps when I've finished this, I'll keep an eye out.

If you want to view the original photographs, they can be seen here.