‘In a commercial setting, you don’t need to read the sign to get it. It works in your peripheral vision. You see its colour. There are so many stories that come from a shade of blue or the depth of a red [...] I'm interested in that meditative moment, when you’re looking at a magazine or a billboard and you’re emptying your mind. You just download whatever image it is and you’re not even really processing it.’
– Jim Speers
Auckland based artist Jim Speers’ current exhibition Numerology and Territories continues his interest in appropriating the language and materials of local industry. His text based works carefully select the names of companies that make us aware of the semantic construction of a brand. VeilSide, for instance, is a company that specialises in customising body work for sports cars. The capitalisation of the ‘V’ and ‘S’ exists in the original brand. However by lifting these words out of their original context and simplifying the type, Speers places emphasis on the poetic combination of words and the way they function in an urban setting.