Signs

In this ongoing project I make a sequence of not-small not-big not-visible not-invisible road signs. Each of these road signs measure 10 inches x 10 inches. These signs direct us toward metaphysical phenomenon, not the events or locations that are suggested. My intention is to punctuate the pedestrian’s mind with an unsettling or pleasing, disorientating idea. None of these signs reference the real-world geographic location of any of the other signs in the sequence. However, if you were to read them all - now spread over five continents - a non-linear narrative unfolds. That narrative is informed by Indra’s Net. Using wheatpaste, or sometimes nothing but gravity, I place the signs almost out of sight in areas of mundane beauty.

Signs are most effective when they become obscured or when they disintegrate.

andrew shaw - text art - an undisclosed measure of time

Andrew Shaw - Text Art - a petal drops from a flower where things have happened

andrew shaw - you can fly but you love heavy things

andrew shaw text art - an exit sign above a door in the corridor of an american school

Andrew Shaw - Text Art - all the turtles in one pond suddenly disappear

andrew shaw poetry - in the distance is the noise of something going very wrong

andrew shaw text art - a black fly walks on a mirror

Andrew Shaw - a black plastic fork floating in a puddle outside waterloo underground

Andrew Shaw - a foil-wrapped condom placed on a library shelf between books of poems by william blake

andrew shaw - a kite festival drawn from memory with my non-dominant hand

Andrew Shaw - a guide book for machu picchu written in braille trampled underfoot.

Andrew Shaw - a nature documentary left playing in the headrest screen of an airplane flying from oslo to marrakesh

Andrew Shaw - a rose of shoes beside an inflatable castle and another row of shoes outside a temple

Andrew Shaw - a shy conversation about sex held through a window on an unremarkable afternoon

Andrew Shaw - a single page of botanic drawings discovered by two people fucking beneath a bridge

andrew shaw - a snow leopard measures its breath

Andrew Shaw - a splash of tea on the carpet in the shape of nina simone

Andrew Shaw - a tree filled with blossom beneath the migratory path of high flying birds

Andrew Shaw - a wasp nest that responds to the sound of opera

Andrew Shaw - an anaconda of piss crawling across the concrete of a skatepark in osaka

Andrew Shaw - a forgotten plate of food beneath a table at an indonesian wedding

Andrew Shaw - the broken filament of a stop sign in saigon it is raining it is tuesday

Andrew Shaw - the chorus of a song remembered when eating chocolate

Andrew Shaw - the colour of birdshit by the funeral ghats on the banks of the ganges

Andrew Shaw - the gas that fuels a star which lights a room where you noticed a painting not hung straight

Andrew Shaw - the sound of arvo part music coming from somewhere remote at 2.23am

Andrew Shaw - a cockroach disinterested in your conversation about love

Andrew Shaw - a crow finds a snail in the moss on a rooftop in beijing

Andrew Shaw - approximately one handful of mist

Andrew Shaw - biarritz a creased photograph on the side of a fridge

andrew shaw - proof of a pine cone dreaming

Andrew Shaw - somewhere in the indus valley a cow is scratching itself against a post there's the smell of barley and the clouds look like rain

Andrew Shaw - the art gallery gift shop after dark

andrew shaw the colour of your skin around a bee sting

Andrew Shaw - the gust of air before a train arrives

Andrew Shaw Poetry Text Art An Unusually Low Rainbow

Andrew Shaw Poet text art - the sudden flood of emotion when someone touches a wrist