Image: Lisa WAUP (Gunditjmara, Torres Strait Islands) NELOTS (detail) 2021, custom made reflective traffic signs, screen printed, ink, found metal stands made by Blueprint Sculpture. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Christian Capurro.
This work is composed of steel, metal and ink and measures 2.5 metres tall with a 69-centimetre-wide base.
Working from top to bottom this artwork is one of three custom made traffic signs found in the exhibition by the artist. An eight-sided shape, or octagon is the sign described here. With eight sides equal in length and a red background with white lettering it is typical of the colour and shape used for a road sign, the stop sign. In bold white capitals across the centre of the surface of the sign is the word NELOTS with the letters N, E, L, O, T, S presented backwards when reading from left to right. Or if flipped vertically, read the word STOLEN. Similar to a road sign the metal surface is reflective, however unlike the stop sign and its singular use of red and white, here the artist has screen printed black ink across the surface of the sign, an additional overlay of pattern, making the text beneath harder to distinguish. On the far-right side covering half of the capital letter S is a circular imprint like a screenprint of bubble wrap across the surface whereas the remainder of the black ink shown across the sign looks more like tyre tread, of a sign fallen flat onto a roadside and then driven over. The red octagon is affixed onto a long cylindrical steel pole which is attached to a flat self-supporting steel base so that the work can stand upright in the space. It is displayed on an angle, coming out from the white Art Museum wall.
Here Waup alters and reverses the text conventionally associated with various road signs. Instead of reading STOP the sign subverts and invites a reading of – drive it like you stole it – a car bumper sticker for the colonisation of Australia. Negating the sign’s primary purpose is intended to disorient the viewer, while simultaneously articulating the backwardness of colonial narratives in Australia.
The signs in this gallery are part of a series of work in which the artist explores the powerful motif of the directional traffic sign, conjured up by the reversal of the words Stolen, Lost and Wanted and, by extension, attempts by various institutions to control, repress and disorientate First Nations people on their own land.