Being means evolving

Part of the Time After Time exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, Walter van Rijn’s Unconsumable Global Luxury Dispersion (UGLyD) includes his Being Human font, printed on A8 cards, a single letter or digit on each. Visitors can arrange these how they wish, and indeed take them away, much like business cards. In doing so, they take not only a fragment of art, but also a fragment of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, key words of which are embedded in each capital letter of the font – C includes ‘Right to Privacy’, T includes ‘All Born Equal’ and so on. Public engagement seemed to start slowly, but then the cards started to disappear (word went round?), and of course not at the same rate for each letter, nor were there the same numbers of cards for each letter to begin with. Some took the initial letters of their names, or names of friends and loved ones. Others chose the letters with their favourite statements embedded. I took enough to make a short peice of bunting for display in The Art House window. Now, several weeks into the exhibition some letters are missing as their stock has been exhausted, and thus some words can no longer be made. Here are some of the examples.

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