Travelling along these two highways the old signage is often the only clue to the extraordinary activities taking place out of sight. They mark the borders of the extreme types of scientific activity taking place there. These are places we are prohibited from visiting, typographic markers to 60 years of secret missile, aeronautical and space research.
Recreating these signs removes them from their purely practical function and gives them a new meaning. This meaning teeters between their written content,
with all its historical associations, and the supposed dangers of the desert ‘badlands’ the signs inhabit. They function as paintings about these inhospitable landscapes.
Although far removed from their origins, they chart the history of the areas they served and the aspirations and fears of the people that erected them.
The signs are marked, scratched and stained by their time spent upon the land.