Public market 2006

A pioneer of artist books in the 1960s, North American pop artist Edward Ruscha has consistently played with text and images to explore the peculiarities of vernacular language, graphics and typography. In his hands, words become forms and images become words.

These two prints — Public market and Your space #1 2006 — refer to the graphic visual environment of Los Angeles, drawing our attention to the architectural qualities of billboard signage over and above its intended function to convey a message. One print designates a ‘public market’, while the other is conspicuously vacant, advertising its own potential and perhaps signalling the threat of the billboard’s obsolescence in the digital age. Significantly, the erasure or censoring of text is a recurring motif in Ruscha’s work, testifying to a growing preoccupation with ideas of vacancy, voids and emptiness.