works

other works

materials

themes

Vernon engaged a sign writer in the production of these text-based works, and he uses a sign-writing font. On the face of it, this makes the works and the messages seem very familiar, blunt, and everyday. But the longer one looks at them, placed in the context of the art gallery, the more meanings are called to mind, the more connections can be made. But the nature of these meanings and connections will be dependent on a fluid and mobile context. For instance, Mary Eagle points out that Vernon himself has explained that some of these works had quite biographically precise references for him – coming out of his experience of being in Germany and making his own connections between that country and his own. Knowing that gives the works a certain inflection, a bite. To take this point a little further, Mary suggests imagining another context, say Africa fifty years ago, or early twentieth-century United States at the time of racial segregation; in these contexts these works could have had different and special meanings. As different people come to a work of art over time, what it communicates, what emerges first in their response to it, will vary – whether it be a political interpretation, a psychological understanding, or a response to technique.