World's First Hand-painted Rollercoaster
Local artists team up with Alton Towers for the rebirth of Nemesis, their huge mural marks the rollercoaster as the only one in the world to be hand painted.
Nemesis Reborn is the first rollercoaster in the world to be hand-painted with its own mural and this one-of-a-kind operation was pulled off by three Stoke and Staffordshire based mural artists.
Rob Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent), Ethan Lemon (Biddulph) and Tom Addis (Cheadle) were invited to work on a first-of-its-kind, unique art project: the epic task of hand-painting the return of Europe’s first inverted rollercoaster, ‘Nemesis Reborn’, three decades after its original debut.
🔗 Rob Fenton
🔗 Ethan Lemon
🔗 Tom Addis
In total, a mile-long piece of artwork was painted by hand and the trio worked in total secrecy before the big unveiling. The painting itself, in a big warehouse, is described by the team as a scene from a heist movie as they all paced around with metre rulers, holding chairs in the air to imagine the ride itself.
Each of the 53 tracks were painted individually, sometimes, arriving upside down and back to front. The team had to work from the end to the beginning, starting the work on track 53, which, is at the end of the coaster heading backwards toward track 1, at the beginning. The whole time the direction of the vein travels forward and the veins move around the tracks, between track sections.
It’s great to see Alton Towers work with local artists on this and when I spoke to Rob Fenton, this is what he’s most pleased about, being ablr to collaborate with two other Stoke and Staffs based artists. Take a bow, Merlin.
A world-first right here in Staffordshire. Nemesis Reborn is now the world’s first hand-painted rollercoaster. The ride reopened earlier this year with much fanfare, now we can tell the story of the artists who played a part in bringing the ride back to life.