Hi-ICONS

Culture as currency and the commodification of culture sees identities of places throughout Ireland iconicised. Brown signs or tourist signs stand guard at gateways to towns and villages where meaning once represented through language agus anam an baile takes on new visual forms. Icons of past-practices and traditional crafts stand proud beside sport, leisure and roadside services. The new primitive and the imaginary other (Errington 1998) newly represented in a modern form, where each icon becomes a character in a new language of identity and cultural commodification.

Hi-ICONS make use of these “marks” and identity makers. In re-purposing these “signs” or “town tags” and fashioning them into wearable plastic identities – in glorious psychedelic tricolour.

Collectible-wearable art, as identity merchandise.