I came across the work of Ellie Laycock via Jim Mortram on Twitter and was immediately struck by her series Signs of Development in which Laycock repurposes found advertising imagery showing luxury development sites, overlaying text with phrases from marketing material – the combined messages of the finished single images provide a jolt which is immediate and effective. On her website, Laycock describes the work as follows:
“On the street level hoardings around luxury development sites, property developers and marketeers illustrate their vision of the near future. There is a disconnect between the existing population of an area and the developers digital visions of who will soon be occupying the new ‘luxury’ flats. Furthermore, many of these properties are bought off-plan by overseas investors as safety deposit boxes rather than to be occupied as homes. This influx of global wealth, combined with the commodification of home, impacts and displaces our communities.
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The work also appropriates the language of the super prime market and global capital flows, extracting key phrases from their marketing material. My work explores themes around the current housing crisis in London and beyond, the commodification of home, hyper-gentrification, social cleansing, the politics of space and invites dialogue on where we go from here, or perhaps ultimately, where will we live?”
This series hits a lot of the notes that I would aspire to with my BoW – it is a personal response to the one of the key issues faced by ordinary people in the current uncertain economic times. The use of appropriated advertising imagery and text is highly effective in creating a third meaning which is both immediate and encourages further thought and consideration. The font used for the text is a strong stylistic choice which allows both images to work together and contrast with each other – with many of the composites it is not immediately apparent that we are looking at advertising images, I thought they were documentary or editorial photographs at first and the realisation that these are intended to sell a lifestyle made me reassess and look again.
Links:
Bibliography:
Shutterhub (2022) Close Up: Ellie Laycock – Signs. At: https://shutterhub.org.uk/close-up-ellie-laycock-signs/ (accessed 5th December 2022)
London in Bits (2022) ‘Where Do You Go?’ with artist, Ellie Laycock. At: https://londoninbits.substack.com/p/where-do-you-go-with-artist-ellie (accessed 20th June 2023)
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