Wallinger’s artful plan to pay for anti-Ocado fight
Prize-winning artist steps in to support anti supermarket fight on school's doorstep
Friday, 9th September 2022 — By Charlotte Chambers

Mark Wallinger with children in Yerbury Primary School’s playground
TURNER Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger has thrown his voice behind a campaign calling on a supermarket giant to dump its plans to build a 24/7 truck depot just yards from an Archway primary school playground.
The artist, who has a studio just off Holloway Road, accused the online supermarket Ocado of “corporate greed” and an “abuse of power” in its dealings with Yerbury Primary School in Foxham Road.
As part of a fundraising drive to pay for lawyers working for campaigners challenging Ocado’s plans for the Bush Industrial Estate, Mr Wallinger launched a brand new online artwork, One Potato, Two Potato, which the public can pay £1 each to help reveal 66,528 squares – the number of pounds needed to keep fighting the supermarket.
Mr Wallinger said: “It seems such a clear abuse of power and corporate greed. And coming here, and just seeing the proximity of the depot just across the wall – it’s almost cartoon-like in its absurdity, this corporate giant that can’t even come up with a straightforward sentence to describe their mission statement.”
He added: “It just seems ridiculously and appallingly disruptive. I mean, it’d be 24/7. It’s not just the pollution in the air. There’s the noise pollution, there’s just disruption it will cause all around the site.”
People who pay for a square will have a high-res version of the artwork sent to them when all the squares have been revealed, while 46 lucky winners will receive a signed poster of the work.
Mr Wallinger came to prominence in 1995 when he was nominated for the Turner Prize, which he went on to win in 2007 with a recreation of Brian Haw’s Parliament Square anti-Iraq war protest, which ended in 2011. He was also the first artist to occupy Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth in 1999.
Campaigners against the supermarket have already spent £50,000 fighting them and say they will need more than another £60,000 after the online giant launched a third bid to open their depot, as well as legally challenging an earlier refusal by Islington.
Ocado have opted to avoid applying for planning permission and instead have chosen a route, called a Certificate of Lawful Existing Use or Development (a CLEUD) which requires less scrutiny and would see them operate with few or no conditions to their licence, should it succeed.
The school was forced to move its teaching to just one side of the building when Ocado first arrived unannounced on the site two years ago and began operating heavy machinery in preparation for the depot.
Yerbury deputy headteacher Liam Frost said: “We want them to go away. It’s the wrong thing in the wrong place.”
He added: “We are an anti-bullying school and what they’re doing is bullying.”
Refusing to respond to Mr Wallinger’s comments specifically, an Ocado spokesperson said: “Ocado is committed to having a positive impact on the local community. This would be the greenest and quietest grocery facility in the UK, and we have committed to using a 100 per cent electric delivery van fleet – replacing the vans that currently deliver in the area – and install a green ‘living wall’ along the boundary. It would also create around 300 new jobs for the local economy.”