Kingston residents may have noticed unusual road signs as they go about their daily lives, and it’s all down to award-winning performer and artist Kim Noble.
Local disused road signs have been repurposed as art with phrases like ‘Your email has really pissed me off’ and ‘I’ll be waiting for you over there my love’ placed on them.
These two pieces have recently appeared in the Lower Richmond Road area, and the artist responsible, Kim Noble, said that the sentiments expressed on the signs stem from personal experiences and feelings.
“These ones particularly are as if there’s someone wandering around and thinking about life and putting them on [the signs],” he said.
As part of Noble’s body of work, he often does guerrilla art in the public realm, such as changing posters and leaving messages for people to find.
Noble was half of the BAFTA-nominated comedy duo Noble and Silver and produces one-man shows and exhibitions with an emphasis on performance art and surreal comedy.
He believes that it is important to offer people something slightly outside of their normal routines, to stop and think about something that isn’t trying to sell them something or to give them directions.
The signpost initiative all started a while ago when Noble was living in a different part of London and he saw an empty signpost.
“It just stood there looking rather sad. I felt quite sorry for it. It was just this impotent bit of metal that didn’t have a job. So I sort of thought I’d give it a job,” he said.
Jokingly declaring himself an “egotistical narcissist”, Noble spoke about how he makes stuff to be seen out in the streets, not in galleries or art shows.
Noble has even made unique sick bags to place on aeroplanes with funny and uplifting messages for passengers to read.
“Another sort of inspiration is just that we’re kind of bombarded with stuff, and we’re kind of – I’m kind of stuck in my own little world, my own little narrow-minded world, and I think it’s quite good to be offered stuff that isn’t part of the usual routine in life,” he said.
While acknowledging that some people might get annoyed by his installations, Noble hopes that most people would welcome them as vibrant additions to the town, especially considering all signposts used were out of action.
Speaking about the signpost reading ‘Your email really pissed me off’, Noble said: “It has obviously got a naughty word in it. The day I put it up it got bashed around and someone put something over it, and then I went back the next day and tightened it up and removed the bag from it.”
Two of Noble’s signposts in Kingston have since been taken down, but residents should expect more on the way in the next month.
Noble commented that sadly society as a whole doesn’t like things that don’t fit in, highlighting the importance of allowing people to see “oddities in everyday life”.
