Trav'ller in the Dark

Commissioned by Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, in 2011, 'Trav'ller in the Dark' took the form of a classic neon signboard. It remained in place until 2015, when the Hard Interchange building that it was sited on was demolished. 

Central to the work was the inclusion of the changeable sign - one of the kind recognisable the world over, used by schools, hotels, sports grounds and diners, equally likely to be offering '99c Chicken Wings' as they are to be offering to save our souls. This space in the work remained an active space, in part controlled by the artist and in part handed over to the wider community. A changing series of texts will appear on the sign over the life of the work, some the choice of the artist and others drawn from suggestions made by the public at large.

This work was commissioned alongside another incarnation of the exhibition, 'How Should I Live? (Maybe That's Not the Question)', from which the imagery of the sword and balloon was derived. 

In it's final weeks, it caused some controversy in the city when an unsolicited text appears on the work (see image in gallery below). The text was a variation on a quote by Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Some felt it was disrespectful to the work, but I saw it as evidence that people had truly engaged with the interactive and changeable nature of the text board in the work.