UNTITLED SIGN

This artwork is the beginning of a series in which oppressive signs are illuminated in neon light signage. This harks back to childhood memories of walks around St Kilda, my eyes transfixed on the local sex shop’s flashing neon signage. I was too young to understand the world as it was, especially with the issues that lay around me in St Kilda in the ’80s — homeless, addiction, violence and worse.

Today, I have more understanding of the present world and I deliver to you an artwork of duality: to those who have no knowledge of the deaf, the naive may see the pretty lights flashing in a handshape. This is the sign for CUNT, which is generally an offensive word depending on the context — cast in mirth or rage. In this context, it is language that impacts the deaf community; the linguistic overprotection and the language deprivation that plagues us all.

Within the community, there are those ‘privileged’ to have been born into rich Auslan, and those ‘privileged’ to have been taught English fluently—and all the others who have fallen between and betwixt, into the void. By looking deeper and longer into the void, there emerges a seemingly sinister portrait of the deaf community.