A COLLECTOR’S JOURNEY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM

Scott Myles (b. 1975)
Double Exit
each: signed, titled, numbered and dated '"DOUBLE EXIT" Myles 2004 unique set 3' (on the reverse)
silkscreen on paper, in two parts
each: 28⅜ x 40⅛in. (72 x 102cm.)
overall: 28⅜ x 80⅜in. (72 x 204cm.)
Executed in 2004, this work is number three from an edition of five unique variants

Another example is in Tate, London.

Provenance:
The Modern Institute, Glasgow.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibited:
Glasgow, The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd., HUO I Want to Know Everything!, 2004 (another example exhibited).
London, Tate Modern, Image/Text, 2006-2007 (another example exhibited).

*λ Please see our Conditions of Sale for definitions of cataloguing symbols.

Specialist Notes:

Scott Myles’ Double Exit, 2004 is one of the artist’s black and fluorescent-orange screen-printed text works that replicate instructional signs and offer ambiguous meanings. Although at first glance the works look like standard industrially-produced signs, on closer inspection, the skips and mis-registers of the screen-printing process reveal themselves, giving the work an almost hand-painted quality.

As the artist notes of the series, ‘The screenprinted works on paper have become a kind of handmade series of mass-produced signage...The prints have a handmade quality, and hover outside the realm of mass production. Their fixed meanings become more open and ambiguous due to my reprinting and their repetition. I think of them as “pictures” as opposed to “signs”, and I’m interested in this subtle shift in meaning’ (S. Myles, quoted in R. Tufnell, ‘Rob Tufnell in conversation with Scott Myles’, in Scott Myles, Zurich 2007, p. 55). In their form and repetition, the images cease to function as instructional signs. Indeed the artist has specified that in their hanging, they should never function as an EXIT sign.

This work is featured in our How to Collect like a Tate Curator article – find out more here.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.