Duidelik. Ashleigh MacClean at What if the World... Project Room
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Type is a funny beast. It's pervasive, but it's stylings largely go unnoticed, overshadowed by type's big brother words. People can get really obsessed with type. I personally have had a long, albeit not too educated, love affair with it, agonising for hours when I design things between two equally meritous fonts. I think there has been a huge surge of type love internationally recently, when a film like Helvetica can have rave reviews and be sold out in all it's screenings. Hell, I'm sold on it, can't wait. So I was pleased to visit Ashleigh McClean's show at the What If The World... Project Room the other night. Although not being about Helvetica, it was a show about type, specifically about the vinyl type adorning taxis. It's a strange art, largely ignored or unnoticed, which Ashleigh has taken rescaled and reworked into large vinyl wall pieces. Taken out of the context of a taxi, the gangsta hardcore changes into cute, the aggressive into funny, the boasting into interesting. On the walls one pays more attention to the styling of the letters, which matches the meaning of the words to the point where each piece looks like the name of the font.
Beyond that the shows elevates a different type of cool, than which I normally consider hip. It's duidelik, it's kallid, it's Black Label not Windhoek. Gaartjie not Sliding Door Operator.I'm also really impressed that What If The World... is still operating this gallery as a project space, something the city needs a lot more of.
Labels: Ashleigh MacClean
posted by Robert Sloon at 11:12 AM
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