Born 1965 Belfast, Northern Ireland

The work of Philip Napier has evolved as a kind of contemporary Detourne. That urban tactic evolved by the Situationists where the appropriation of systems of signage became a means of contesting space and its determinants. In Napier’s work this re routing of meaning has been presented in both public and gallery based projects.

His work evolves out of a practice based of the north of Ireland, a context heavily inscribed by the visual components of social, political and national affiliations produced for public consumption and where meaning is not neutral. Napier’s work has attempted to renegotiate the power inherent in aspects of language, signs and symbols and produce the possibility for new meaning. Particularly in the last number of years there has been a consolidation of placing the work in situations where physical and human geographies overlap. That is to say that the work has been evolved for contexts where space is encountered not only as a physical and economic phenonomen but also as a psychological condition.