Marina Willer's Drain Covers

Marina Willer is a graphic designer; film maker and a partner of Pentagram. I had never come across her work before, yet I found some of her work on ‘It’s Nice That’ recently.

Her book called ‘Overlooked’ is filled with rubbings of drain covers found in London. It holds a series of 22 rubbings with an essay by Willer. The main idea of the book is to present the idea that works of art is not only found in galleries and museums, especially in a capital city, like London. It provides an insight that beauty can be found in something that is unnoticed and ignored.

I find the title of Willer’s book very fitting for the contents on the pages inside. A business man, rushing to get to work, running across the streets of London every day, six days a week would never for a second admire the drains covers beneath his feet. Nor the tourist visiting London for the day, taking photographs of the masterpieces in the galleries or capturing memories next to famous monuments. It would never cross their mind to look beneath their feet to see what may be there. Of course you would never go somewhere just to look at drainage covers, as they are found in every place. I find the title of the book very interesting as it sums up the book in one word. To think that a person would create such beauty out of something so ‘Overlooked’.

The rubbings caught my eye due to the colour Willer used. Warm tones, including pink, red and orange, drew me in to read the article. Furthermore the white background made the rubbings stand out from the page. If the rubbings where in a black ink then I think it would definitely be more obvious to the viewer what the prints were. For when I first saw the images on ‘It’s Nice That’ I was drawn in by the colour choice, yet I could not figure out what the prints were without reading the article. I suppose in some way this reflects the idea of looking into things with more detail.

I feel that I have been inspired to delve deeper into the world, to look further into something even when it could possibly be right under my feet.

Go check the book out!

Emily :)

( all images are from https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/pentagram-marina-willer-london-drain-covers-overlooked-150316 )