Curfew (2018)

This poster print for flyingleaps is a new iteration of a Dr. D favourite. The TfL Congestion Charge signage hijacked to comment on urban gentrification and social engineering. What’s particularly interesting regarding this style of Dr. D work is that Curfew wears the ‘livery’ of officialdom. It goes under the radar and to even register it as oppositional can take a second or third glance. The spectacle, populist media, policing and right leaning policy all cohere to manage a supposed ‘democratic’ society in its own image. With ‘Curfew’, the ‘content’ and surreptitious physical form of the work reiterates passersby’ lack of access and agency. Mimicry of the visual languages of authority and its revelation to be false, mocking and/or questionable interrupts prevailing messages of social control. They prompt both mirth and an uneasy feeling that we’re constantly being micro-managed. And the fact that publics are first induced to ignore or rather not see such works – who reads a notice we think we’ve already seen a thousand times – makes the eventual realization that they do not belong all the more subversive.   www.drdlondon.com