Nathan Coley is a celebrated Scotland-based artist and graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. While much of his work deals with political themes (a recreation of an IRA-bomb-damaged Marks and Spencer, an exhibition about Pan Am Flight 103, and his Turner Prize-winning recreations of churches, synagogues and mosques), I’m a bigger fan of his large-scale typeface structures like There Will Be No Miracles Here, shown above. The Tate describes this piece:
In THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE the glitzy typeface jars with the folksy light bulbs, the prodigious title simultaneously forbidding and admitting the possibility of divine intervention. It derives from a historical event where a King, in effect, imposed state jurisdiction over the ‘higher’ law of God. Opening up a range of possible readings, in Coley’s work truth and belief are considered unstable and relative. His work proposed strategies for us to engage more expansively with the world in which we live.
While Coley’s not without his detractors, I think the setting of the scaffolding and lights in rural areas or gardens are part of what makes it so interesting from a visual perspective. It’s a grand-scale, modern installation that, like a lot of contemporary art, maybe doesn’t really mean anything at all other than what you take from it yourself. Some more similar pieces from Coley after the jump.
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