THE SIGNS
Private View jan 31st 7 - 9 pm.
A site-responsive urban installation, mapping people’s emotional connections to specific places in [borough taken out] North Kensington through 40 signs.
A new work by Anton Mirto created and produced with Ailbhe Murphy
Commissioned by The Muse UK Charity for the Arts
Sign Graphics by Alberto Duman
Do certain places make you remember how you felt there once before?
From March-July 2022, M2 engaged 22 local people (17-70yrs) in workshops and interviews to explore their emotional memories in places where feelings were once had, and remain.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, stories and memories were shared, embodied and poeticised, resulting in 130 co-written signs. These memories reflect the depth and breadth of participants’ lives, backgrounds and communities; each sign starts with ‘In this place’ or ‘A place where’...
The Signs were then sent to 13 people, not part of the project and many not from the area, with instructions to score how each made them feel; those that provoked, and/or lingered long in the heart. The 40 signs that scored most emotive were then fabricated and installed in December 2022 in and around the streets of North Kensington. Some of the signs have disappeared since!
Each sign is a personal voice and sometimes acts as an unmentionable ‘rumour’ in the community. We hope their existence will be spread by word of mouth; map and interconnect relationships between people, history and space. The project aims to arouse curiosity in personal and local narratives and produce alternative place meanings, scar and humanise the streets with feelings not normally shared in the public domain.