OPEN

Carol Laidler + Pat Jamieson, Bristol 2012

From the street the OPEN sign can be seen hanging on the glass door of the empty shop and pasted across the wall behind the door, the word WOUND is written in large black letters: a shout, a cry, or perhaps an instruction to passers by. The empty shop has not been altered, leaving it starkly vulnerable in the harsh white neon light. The door is shut and it cannot be entered, placing the viewer outside looking in and creating a tension between the idea of open and not open. This converts the edge of the shop front into the frame of the work.

We are interested in the surprise element of happening upon this work by chance or glimpsing it from the top of a bus. Like an altered billboard it exists within the everyday world as a small disruption.

The work is temporal, existing for two nights only, the photograph, taken at the one point where the two words can be seen together, is all that remains.