The Arts & Culture Journal

Laura Southcott’s playful typographic design comes with a serious message.

Disguising taboo language in cosy, comfortable settings as something inconspicuous is Laura Southcott’s response to the dilemma of misleading design aesthetic.

In her latest work ‘Small actions have large consequences’, Laura places offensive text in the most unlikely, discursive of situations; all due to dramatic changes in the way in which they’re is produced.

‘Prick’, ‘Whore’, ‘Dickhead’ are words we would usually expect to see scrawled on the walls of public toilets or etched onto school desks by delinquent teens. Yet Laura’s often delicate and dainty typography is so far removed from these situations that the viewer is forced to confront their own judgements on style ahead of content.

The images are uncomfortable. We feel that the elderly couple sitting under the embroidered ‘Bastard’ framed picture should be protected from such obscenities - or even worse perhaps, that one of them might have produced it. The same is true of ‘whore’ scribbled by what looks like a child’s hand. In fact the longer you look at these images, the more disconcerting they become.  

Now we are all guilty of buying records because we like the artwork, or choosing films based on the case alone. What ‘Small actions have large consequences’ does it to address such choices with contempt and educated scowl. Simply decorating profanities does not alter there true meaning but merely lets them slip under the radar. The same is true for attention-grabbing packaging on poorly manufactured products, useless appliances, or government ‘lies’.