Stop Making Sense
2008, purple neon
183 x 150 x 40cm
Series: 1 – 1 (+ artist’s proof)
“Stop Making Sense” is a work that deals with language in its discussion of writing as sign.
The sign is viewed in place of the thing itself, the “thing” existing in the present and simply being referred to by the sign. The sign therefore represents the present in its absence by replacing it. It is essentially a signifier for when we cannot fully experience the thing in the present. This piece looks at what occurs when the sign becomes itself the “thing” and where language is deliberately constructed to make it difficult for us to encounter the signifier in the absence of the thing; where are initial interpretation is halted by a delay and where the subject of language becomes self-referential.
It is the idea of the sign as object.