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Nissan is highlighting London’s battle with air quality by using the 100% electric Nissan LEAF to power a striking piece of street art in Waterloo, London that depicts the Capital’s iconic skyline. The car manufacturer commissioned Reverse Graffiti artist, Moose – the founder of his field – to create the mass-scale mural.
Unlike traditional graffiti, Moose creates his art by cleaning dirt off surfaces using a jet washer or wire brush, leaving a striking design in negative on the wall. Much of the dirt is caused by particulate matter from vehicle exhausts, levels of which often exceed guidelines and limits in busy areas of London and other European cities.
The artwork – which is on show in the subway on Station’s Approach, Waterloo - includes a host of London’s most famous landmarks: Buckingham Palace, The Shard, Battersea Power Station and The London Eye, to name just a few. Produced to highlight the growing issue of poor air quality across Europe’s biggest cities, it aims to showcase how much cleaner they could be if more people adopted electric vehicles.
In a world-first, the jet washer used to clean the wall was powered by the Nissan LEAF via the LEAF to Home equipment – a portable device that converts electricity from the car’s battery to provide as much as two days-worth of power to a household on a single charge.
Before the artwork made its way onto the wall, Moose sketched the skyline by hand before creating stencils that pieced together to produce the finished artwork, standing some 2.5 meters tall and 10 meters wide.
The campaign will place Nissan at the heart of the debate, leading the call for clean air and smarter cities.
"I've been using reverse graffiti for fifteen years now, in fact I named it. My whole ethos is about highlighting the amount of pollution we endure daily using a very positive harmless method that never fails to ask questions about what we accept and what we shouldn't accept in our environment. For these reasons I was keen to be involved in this project,” explained Moose, who originates from Leeds. “Electric cars and alternative fuelling systems provide the brightest future we've ever known in the history of the automotive industry in terms of protecting our environment. It's a pleasure to be given the opportunity to create public art in this way and I'm very pleased with the iconic simplicity of the mural and its message."
Moose’s artwork is on show in London Waterloo and Nissan is encouraging the public to come out and see it for themselves.