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| Matakana Pictures Exhibitions Artists |
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Show Number 9: 13.August - 9.October 2005 sign_ON_NOW! Using Polaroid film, I have since the 1970s recorded the iconography of the ‘signwriter’ or ‘signpainter’ - their special visual language designed to attract shoppers to local business identities has served to engage and fascinate me endlessly. As an artist, most everything I do has some connection with ‘signs’ - be it image or language of signs, or the intriguing methodology of the sign-makers themselves - it all becomes re-translated, re-interpreted as personal iconography, Hartiganised into my own icomic “sign language”. My new ‘H-type’ works are derived from Polaroid originals of NZ signs from the early 70s & 80s. The small originals are scanned and subtly enhanced to make more apparent, the ‘surface history of the film plane’ - e.g. tiny mould spores, age scratches and emulsion faults on the plastic coated picture surface. Post digital file creation, the images are rendered onto canvas via an Epsom 9600 Piezo printer to deliver the ultimate in Museum quality archival printing. The works have a feeling of age, or of a time now past, very much like an old silent movie; there is also a forensic quality to the images created simply through enlargement. Additionally, an element of home movie pervades the work. That familiar homely moment caught on translucent celluloid - partly, this the natural disposition of Polaroid film and why I choose to use it. Essentially, I have been having a love affair with Polaroid film for the last 35 years. For me, these are beautifully evocative images, strangely surreal for realistic depictions, which speak of a time now long past in our societal and economic history within New Zealand. The images recorded are also intensely personal - I know or remember well every chink, crack and scrape of paint, every enticing aspect of the subjects having re-visited the various sites many, many times during their likely limited life. As such, signage entities are only here for a short time usually, inevitably suffering the upgrade axe of the new proprietor on site. Paul Hartigan |
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Paul Hartigan 42. Drink L&P |
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Paul Hartigan 43. Venus of K Rd |
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Paul Hartigan 44. The Dentists |
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