Etchells’ text for this long LED display work both begins from, and periodically returns to, the phrase ‘news ticker’, echoing the form of a scrolling news feed in public space. Free associating from the starting point, Etchells’ shifts the context and atmosphere of the work through puns, allusions, rhymes and part-rhymes – ‘news ticker noose licker nudes flicker crude zipper’ – exploring a slippery border between sense and nonsense. As the work moves between phrases with different kinds of connection and resonance in the frame of the news Etchells also exploits a slippery, hallucinatory principle of transformation creating numerous collisions of implied narrative and described images.

About Tim Etchells’ neon and LED works
Etchells’ neon and LED pieces often draw on his broader fascinations as an artist, writer and performance maker, exploring contradictory aspects of language – the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time its amazing propensity to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Through simple phrases spelt out in neon, LED and other media, Etchells strives to create miniature narratives, moments of confusion, awkwardness, reflection and intimacy in public and gallery settings. Encountering the neon sign works, in the streets of a city or in the space of a white cube gallery, the viewer becomes implicated in a situation that’s not fully revealed, or a linguistic formulation that generates confusion or ambiguity. As often in Etchells’ work, in the neons the missing parts of the picture are as important as the elements that are present. Invoking a story, or projecting an idea out-of-context, the work invites us in, but into what exactly we can’t be sure.