Here's a billboard that makes you look - twice. At first, the billboard created by Seattle-based art and architecture firm, Lead Pencil Studio, appears to say nothing.
But look again. It's not blank. It's see-through. The roadside anti-advertisement is a steel window. Through it, there's a clear view of the sky and landscape. The billboard’s message is, ‘pay attention to the simple beauty of the world’.
Located near the US-Canada border crossing of Vancouver, in Blaine, Washington, the structure entitled Non-Sign II is made of stainless steel rods, and its borders resemble television static.
“Borrowing the effectiveness of billboards to redirect attention away from the landscape…this permanently open aperture between nations works to frame nothing more than a clear view of the changing atmospheric conditions beyond,” Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio explained.
Billboard after billboard on road after road divert viewers’ attention away from the natural landscape and onto advertising messages. This billboard does the opposite and questions consumer culture in the process.
SEND IN WHAT YOU'VE SEEN. We're starting a page called STREET SEEN in Australian Creative magazine. Send in the posters, billboards and installations you've seen and loved in your daily travels and we'll publish them with your details. Send to editor@australian creative.com.au.