ARTISTS TALKING

This site-specific installation is Seema Rao’s response to how we receive instruction from public signs in an urban environment. It is set in a concrete space in Spitalfields, an area between the busy financial district and the busy ‘historical’ East End. The space itself has windows for walls, floor to ceiling that look out onto Elders Fields, a small city garden sanctuary and footpath surrounded by swish apartments and office blocks. When illuminated by the afternoon’s electric lights, a large number of people, sometimes inadvertently, have a good view of the exhibition.

Rao has almost single-handedly climbed round the large space and covered the windows, walls, floors and pillars with yards and yards of neon yellow tape. This is the neon of construction workers’ jackets, cyclists’ coats, police tape, and other urgent safety signs. It really shines in the winter light. The tape seems like a trail of map contour lines, a made-up map directed by the physicality of the building. The overall mass and execution of these handmade trails are a playful departure from a force of official control. If close up, you can read a selection of black stencilled instructions, from ‘Do Not Stand’ to ‘Do Not Cry’, the latter intriguingly suggesting emotional restraint. However these words become somewhat overwhelmed by physical display as a whole.

This installation speaks of conflict with authority. The site itself, its hectic surroundings, the human thoroughfare, and implications of the word ‘STOP’ visible to eyes close up, denote ‘stop and think’. And for each passer-by that will be a very personal address. Here and why?