The Same for Everyone

Originally commissioned as part of Aarhus 2017 – European Capital of Culture. Nathan Coley is interested in the idea of ‘public’ space, and his work explores the ways in which architecture becomes invested – and reinvested – with meaning. Across a range of media Coley investigates what the built environment reveals about the people it surrounds and how the social and individual response to it is in turn culturally conditioned. He is best known for a series of illuminated text works that take found phrases (never written by the artist) and by placing them in new contexts creates a powerful ambiguity of meaning. Here the phrase ‘The Same for Everyone’, which the artist first encountered on a hand-painted sign in Denmark, might be read as either a question, provocation, utopian proposal or a statement of protest.