Wafted From Paradise

Solo Show.

Departure Lounge, Luton. 24th Feb – 7th May 2022

A newly commissioned Arts Council project from multidisciplinary artist Maria Meyer exploring the typography and visual culture of Luton’s diverse landscapes. Originally from Leicester, Meyer felt a sense of nostalgia and familiarity, particularly while spending time in Luton’s varied and vibrant multicultural retail areas.

Reading widely around art and architecture Meyer came across the seminal publication ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ by architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown – designers of the Sainsbury Wing at London’s National Gallery. Venturi & Scott-Brown coined the term ‘decorated shed’ to describe the diverse signage and built environment lining the strip in Vegas, with Scott-Brown describing her attraction to the kitsch, assemblages of typography and building materials as ‘hate-love exhilaration’.

During numerous visits to Luton researching and developing her new commission, Meyer began to see parallels between assemblages of typography and signage in the shop fronts of Luton’s Bury Park and Hightown neighbourhoods and the larger-than-life mishmash of styles in Las Vegas.

Adopting an amalgamation of cultural products, graphic design and signage appropriated from the town, this exhibition draws on these parallels, using a combination of digital photographic collage and typographic works to explore Luton’s remarkable retail environments. With local businesses often accommodating multiple unrelated businesses and services under one roof, these new works highlight the gritty optimism and entrepreneurial spirit of Luton’s communities. Beyond false nails, fried chicken, fruit and furniture, these shops offer nourishment, home comforts and connection to a community, which accommodates a diversity of beliefs and heritage, but which shares many of the same values.

STRANGE STRANGERS

Solo Show.

Broadway Gallery, Letchworth Garden City. 15 Jul 2021 – 8 Aug 2021

Through the deconstruction and re-presenting of existing pictures and found objects, Maria Meyer examines our relationship with digitally manipulated contemporary images and products. Exploring ideas around simulacra and the inherent deception of image manipulation, her work employs the slick over-produced visual aesthetic found in today’s advertising. By juxtaposing images in much the same way that poetry places words together, Meyer draws out the concealed agency and meanings held within them, playing with notions of ambiguity and nuance. The disparate images and objects in Meyer’s work are seemingly unrelated, obscure and devoid of obvious meaning, forcing the viewer to question the often conflicting narratives.

In the post-internet age where many of us are glued to our digital devices, our need to extract information quickly and read into images often means that we miss the subtle cues that are withdrawn and not easily verbalised. The digitally deconstructed images in Meyer’s work travers an uncanny valley where pictures become functions of objects, as opposed to representations. Her work speaks to the relationship we have with post-digital imagery and objects, the way objects are represented as images online and the way their high speed consumption affects the way we perceive and experience the ‘real’ world when we not in front of digital screens.

The title of the show is taken from philosopher Timothy Morton’s book ‘The Ecological Thought’. In the book Morton refers to life forms on Earth being ‘strange strangers’, that we are inextricably entangled with. Meyer looks upon objects and images in the same way, often the more we ‘look’ the more strange they become and our relationships with them even stranger.

Curated by Kristian Day