The Charcoal Panoramas

In 2021 Walker was commissioned by The Peabody Association and Moyo Creative to make a large-scale panorama of London for One Mansion Square, the new shared ownership scheme for Battersea PowerStation.

This led to an in depth exploration of the possibilities of charcoal and the idea of the panorama as a way of documenting the city. Using both analogue and digital mapping, together with his longstanding experience of walking the streets of the city to create ever more ambitious works. Culminating in a six panel, 7.5m long work depicting the Thames from Wandsworth to Tower Bridge, created on residency at Bankside Hotel with the Contemporary Collective Gallery. The work is currently on display at the hotel.

In order to allow him to work fluidly at scale, Luke developed a system for fixing charcoal onto canvas using a variety of fixatives applied to the finished piece to stabalise them, and allow the subtlety of charcoal to be fully appreciated without putting it behind glass.