Sam Durant: More Than 1/2 the World

A new series of eight wall-mounted lightbox signs in which protest slogans are translated into polemical and poetic works of art. Handwritten maxims from demonstrations and rallies have been reproduced as coloured illuminated signs – glowing panes in which Durant evokes the self-containment of Colour Field abstraction and conceptualist word art, while subverting these forms through the appropriation of personal and passionate messages. Each work operates at multiple levels, invoking contemporary political realities while employing abstract, critical and affirmative dimensions.

Over the last twenty years, Durant has mined the image archives of international protests and demonstrations, from the early twentieth century to the present, as sources for drawings and large-scale lightbox signs. In the lightboxes, hand-drawn statements are transferred from the source photographs into a format typically associated with commercial signage and advertising. Spontaneous, rapid and subjective messages are transmitted through an informational display mode; and yet the statements achieve new urgency and power from their dispassionate conveyance. Durant channels and enhances the contrarianism, humour, utopianism or challenge embedded in each handwritten slogan. The tension between emotive content and minimalist form expands the meaning of each text – opening it to different inferences and possibilities.

In line with previous lightbox signs, Durant has chosen slogans which transcend their original contexts.