The printed banners are found objects advertising Rap, Reggae, Bollywood or other events, often with a dense pastiche of typography and a medley of artist faces printed on the surface. A ‘more is more’ aesthetic guides the designs, with vast quantities of information offered, far more than could be consumed by the passing motorists who constitute the primary audience. My dating messages are then cut into the material in dense blocks, forming a screen over the imagery. All the texts and images remain visible, but the holes and dangling letter-forms disrupt the ability to easily read or interpret any element. Coherence breaks down and the surface buzzes and vibrates.

 

Overlaying dating site messages onto banners merges two forms of advertising, two carefully crafted projections intent on moving an audience to action. Both undergo a functional shift in the process: the once private messages are writ large and hung for all to see, reveling/wallowing in a peculiar contemporary phenomenon and its inevitable failures. The banners, having served their initial purpose, remain artifacts of the city’s vibrant cultural landscape but are transformed into something reflecting the multi-layered, everything-at-once nature of that landscape, it’s private layers and public proclamations merged into a singular cacophonous display.

 

 

MEERKATS (Team SOCA)

hand cut banner, 49” x 72”, 2016

 

The printed banners are found objects advertising Rap, Reggae, Bollywood or other events, often with a dense pastiche of typography and a medley of artist faces printed on the surface. A ‘more is more’ aesthetic guides the designs, with vast quantities of information offered, far more than could be consumed by the passing motorists who constitute the primary audience. The dating messages are then cut into the material in dense blocks, forming a screen over the imagery. All the texts and images remain visible, but the holes and dangling letter-forms disrupt the ability to easily read or interpret any element. Coherence breaks down and the surface buzzes and vibrates.

 

Overlaying dating site messages onto banners merges two forms of advertising, two carefully crafted projections intent on moving an audience to action. Both undergo a functional shift in the process: the once private messages are writ large and hung for all to see, reveling/wallowing in a peculiar contemporary phenomenon and its inevitable failures. The banners, having served their initial purpose, remain artifacts of the city’s vibrant cultural landscape but are transformed into something reflecting the multi-layered, everything-at-once nature of that landscape, it’s private layers and public proclamations merged into a singular cacophonous display.