News
Monday 23 January 2006
The road to discovery
A student’s fascination with her own identity has led her to travel the length and breadth of the country in search of road and street signs bearing her name. Shelley Jacobs exhibited 231 photographs of different signs for a project entitled Finding Shelley, carried out as part of her MA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University.
Finding Shelley is an installation of photographs of road and street signs including Shelley Street, Shelley Road, Shelley Drive, Shelley Close, Shelley Place, Shelley Court, Shelley Avenue, Shelley Way and Shelley Grove. It is intended to demonstrate not only her obsession of her name, but also reflect a journey of self-exploration and the issues of shyness Shelley overcame as a youngster.
All the signs pictured were left just as Shelley found them, whether daubed with graffiti, or partly hidden by overgrown shrubs and bushes. Every sign on each street was photographed to highlight these individualities.
Shelley said: “Finding Shelley is both literal and metaphorical. I trawled countless copies of the A-Z and the internet to find all the streets called Shelley in the UK. But it is also about finding myself and becoming the more confident person that I am now. The installation exhibited for the MA show was very much a work in progress as I have so far visited 100 of the 288 locations in the UK.”
She added: “Ever since I was a child I have always been obsessed about my name. I would often wander into gift shops looking for pens and mugs with my name on but they were always spelt differently, without the second ‘e’. The piece also addresses the fact that names are becoming slightly irrelevant today, particularly with the advent of new technology such as chip and pin where a signature is not even needed.”
Finding Shelley began by accident after the 26-year-old glanced out of her car window to find she was parked on
Shelley exhibited her work along with other students as part of the School of Art and Design’s MA 2005 Exposition.
Andrew Brown, Shelley’s Programme Leader, said: “I have been greatly impressed by Shelley’s imagination in conceiving the project and even more at the dedication with which she has carried it out. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does and where she goes next.”
ENDS
Notes for editors: The project can be viewed on line at www.findingshelley.com
For more information please contact:
Dave Rogers, Press Officer, on Tel: 0115 848 2650 or via email: dave.rogers@ntu.ac.uk
Or Therese Easom, Press and Media Relations Manager, on Tel: 0115 848 6589 or via email: therese.easom@ntu.ac.uk
