Nihil

Plastic Plaque, Plastic Paint, 2019

Nihil is a house name plaque inspired by Graham Gussin’s Art work entitled ‘Savanna’. Gussin noticed when suburban homes were graced with evocative names like “Savannah” causing him to wonder what kind of magnificent oases lay behind such labels?

In my own neighbourhood, I’m surrounded by second homes—holiday properties that exist only as investments. The absentee owners are disconnected from the area and contribute nothing to the community. Meanwhile, local residents are being priced out, unable to afford the homes they grew up in, while holidaymakers come and go, leaving nought but a drain on public resources that we pay for.

Nihil is a house sign that doesn’t belong anywhere. A protest to empty greed. A Latin word meaning “nothing,” it gently reflects how much this culture takes from a community. When I created it, I was working in a factory making house signs, enduring another particularly dark episode of depression. The company I worked for seemed to mirror these non values—all talk and no trousers, taking and never giving back, yet professing to do so per formatively. Nihil became an act of defiance—a two fingers up to the hypocritical forces draining the life from my home town and myself as a member of a beleaguered workforce.

It reminds me that art, even in the face of rampant greed, dishonesty and ever multiplying displays of wealth off the backs of real people, can still survive, can still crawl, and can still comment—even in the most basic and voiceless of ways.