July
Promise by Carol McGuigan
A found newspaper ad and reproduced scraps from previous Harker Herald posters play with the form, content and context of a traditional billboard.
“I am interested in advertising’s irrepressibility, offering reassuring certainties in the face of profound impermanence. This optimistic NCB ad offers ‘a rewarding future’ to ‘ambitious young men’ in the mid 1970’s coal industry. Recently, demolition opposite Harkers erased buildings whose last heyday was that decade. Current economic turbulence reminds us that nothing is certain but change. Yet also persistent is the problematic promise of the young.’”
“Recurrent themes for me are public lies and private truths, the insidious influence of popular culture and osmotic psycho-geography.’”
Carol McGuigan