# Nine Mugs on a Peckham Wall and the Pressure Washer Waiting Beside Them

On day two of Jamal Ridgeway's mural behind a Peckham bus garage, the sun hits the bricks at 6:40 a.m. and a red petrol pressure washer sits on a pallet nearby, fully fuelled.

By Pablo Iriarte-Svensson · 2026-11-09 · Art · London

Day two. 6:40 a.m. Low sun comes through the open shutter of a disused wash bay behind the bus garage and lands on the back wall like a spotlight someone forgot to switch off.

The work is called Nine Mugs on a Draining Board. Exterior masonry paint and spray on yellow London stock brick, six metres wide, three high. The ground is cobalt. The draining board is acid green. A hot pink tea towel hangs off its edge. The mugs are mustard and each one is taller than the stepladder.

He did not fill the mortar. The lines run straight through every mug like cracks in glaze.

Two flaws, both kept. The third mug has its handle on the wrong side. And the pink from the tea towel has run down four courses of brick in a single thin drip. He saw it at midnight on day one and put the brush down.

Top left, the pencil grid is still there. Forty centimetre squares, numbered in a hand that slopes to the right. Nobody has asked what the numbers are for.

A pigeon feather is stuck in the tea towel, grey against pink. It arrived on its own sometime after the second coat.

On the sill by the shutter, a driver's steel thermos. It has been there since yesterday afternoon. The driver says it is not abandoned, it is parked.

The pressure washer stands on a pallet by the door. Red, petrol-driven, hose coiled in tight loops. A pair of yellow ear defenders hangs from the handle. A jerrycan stands next to it, and the cap has been wiped clean.

At 6:50 a driver in a hi-vis vest stops in front of the wall for four minutes. Then he asks whether the pink is supposed to run. Ridgeway says yes. The driver says it is the best bit and goes to find his bus.

In Ridgeway's jacket pocket there is a matchbox. It rattles with nothing. Tomorrow he will take a palette knife to the lowest corner of the cobalt and lift one flake, about the size of a fingernail. Then he will leave.

The washer's manual is zipped into a plastic sleeve and tied to the handle with blue string. It looks like the only thing on site anyone has read twice.

Source: https://oddy.one/a/2026-11-09-nine-mugs-on-a-peckham-wall-and-the-pressure-washer-waiting-beside-them/