Artist Ben Wilson is set to see over 500 pieces of artwork destroyed in a deep clean as part of the work taking place on Millennium Bridge. You can help try and save the art by signing the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/save-the-millenium-bridge-chewing-gum-art-trail
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00:00 My name's Ben Wilson and people call me the chewing gum man.
00:05 For the last 19 years I've been transforming discarded chewing gum into art.
00:10 I was looking on the street and I saw this gum.
00:15 I was thinking, what is it? Well I didn't know what it was.
00:18 All these black marks everywhere.
00:21 And then I realised it's chewing gum.
00:23 And I started more and more thinking, my God, that's terrible.
00:28 People have all been so thoughtless, how could they have done that?
00:32 But then I suddenly thought, if I paint on it,
00:35 so suddenly then art could happen anywhere in a spontaneous way.
00:39 And I thought, my God, that's absolutely amazing.
00:42 You know, that I can make art happen in this random way.
00:48 And I like that idea that you made a piece of art in this kind of environment
00:53 where it was some old bit of gum.
00:55 And you're making something really beautiful, almost like a gem,
00:59 something really special or a piece of jewellery.
01:02 The Millennium Bridge is set to close on October 14th for three weeks
01:06 while architectural work gets underway, followed by a deep clean.
01:11 Now he faces over 500 pieces of work being removed from the bridge forever.
01:16 Now I'm saying it's art, why destroy it?
01:19 And even like pictures which are faded, they often have meanings to people.
01:24 So if you take that out, the actual picture connects to the picture
01:28 that the person has in their mind.
01:31 So by taking the picture out, you're kind of in a way, just let it fade.
01:36 So if it's a love message or if it's a rest in peace picture,
01:42 you know, like the picture kind of gradually fades away,
01:45 but the person still has the memory in their mind.
01:48 I think there's a good kind of 600 at this estimate.
01:52 Yeah, and then they could at least, like say,
01:57 I was thinking, well, at least save half of them.
02:00 And they've now gone up from 50 to 75.
02:04 It's almost like saying, if I won 1,000, they would have said 500.
02:08 Or if I'd said-- it's almost like saying in the tape,
02:11 we've decided there's too many paintings to take,
02:13 we're going to have to destroy half of them.
02:16 And how are you going to choose your favourite 75?
02:18 Well, no, it's like me being a hangman.
02:21 It's like people say.
02:23 You know, what I love about the pictures
02:27 is that they celebrate people from all walks of life.
02:32 And so there's people from all sorts of, you know, like backgrounds,
02:37 all countries, religions, age groups.
02:41 And it celebrates all those people.
02:43 There's people from, you know, all over the world
02:46 that dedication is for.
02:48 Why destroy them?
02:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]