This image-text piece is composed of two strands. The text on the right, positioned in between colour images taken by myself, of the ruined house – May Morn – built in the Arts & Crafts style is set in Golden Type, a font designed by William Morris in 1890. The text on the left is set in Helvetica, a modern sans-serif typeface developed by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957, the same year as building of the Elmington Estate, one of the housing estates depicted in the black and white photographs found at May Morn. This work draws on previous research on dialectical images in the writings of Walter Benjamin published in Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture (London: IB Tauris, 2006) and a longer image-text work, ‘May Morn’, published in Gareth Evans and Di Robson (eds), Towards The Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings, (London: Artevents, 2010), pp. 40–59.

The work was commissioned as part of a larger project called The Invisible Project, an online research hub for The Invisible College, hosted by NVA in partnership with the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Strathclyde. 

Inspired by Kilmahew Woods and St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross, Scotland, The Invisible College is an investigative network linking local people, world-class academics, artists, activists and writers.

Publication Details: ‘Residues of a Dream World’, Gerrie van Noord (ed), To Have and to Hold: Future of a Contested Landscape, (Glasgow: NVA, 2011).

http://www.luath.co.uk/to-have-and-to-hold-future-of-a-contested-landscape.html

http://www.nva.org.uk/current-projects/invisible+college-34/

http://www.theinvisiblecollege.org.uk/