Connor Hughes O’Brien

Level 8

2023

For my project Subversive Signals, I have been investigating how signs direct and control our everyday lives. I have been collecting, and reworking, a large selection of scrap and forgotten signs previously used for direction or warning for construction. I have also experimented with making my own signs.

I’m interested in a ‘street’ vernacular and ‘Americana’- a pop-culture urban aesthetic. I work with spray and acrylic paints on largely found materials, using stencils I’ve created.

I use appropriated imagery borrowed from mass media and I try to use humour to create something thought provoking and subversive. I am interested in anti-establishment ideology.