top of page
A yellow light fixture hangs from its cord which stretches out of the frame. The light fixture has a little bracket on the bottom onto which is set a small book with a yellow cover and the title "HELPFUL THINGS" at its top, "HELPFUL" is in red ink and "THINGS" is in black. On the bottom of the book is the name "ANDREA ROBERTS" in black ink. A greenish-yellow hue is cast on the wall.
A small Fender practice guitar amplifier turned on with a few cords plugged into it faces towards a stack of box fans. The fans are all plugged into a series of power bars and extension cords, this all rests on a grey metal base. In the background, the orange extension cord is plugged into a power outlet on the white wall.

Helpful Things

2012-2014

​

A series of commercial signs for sign twirlers with a litany of workplace complaints sourced from online confessional sites and transcribed furtively through swipe texting. Shown with Helpful Things, a book and video compendium, and Column of Heaven, a sound sculpture of two stacks of box fans with a voice intoning a homophone dictionary through the fans. 

​

​
 

​

 

 

 

 


 


 

A diagonal shot of a series of coroplast signs, like the one spun by sign twirlers on street corners, installed in a gallery on a shelf painted the same colour as the greyish-blue wall. There are about 11 signs all layered so some show completely, while others are partially obscured. Each sign is covered with a lot of text, in bold, graphic colours and what would be considered "bad" graphic design, lots of weird layouts, strange colour choices, gradients, and highlighted text. The text itself is taken from online confessional sites where people complained about their jobs, then transcribed through text, really furtively like you would at a desk while at work, so each sign is full of spelling and grammatical mistakes and many wrong word interpretations. The sign in the close foreground has its whole face exposed and it reads "I NEED A NEW HIC WRITE LIEK I NEED A HOLE IN THE HARD I HEAARD YOU IN THE NETWEORK YOU BUSH OF JURISTS ESP. MERE-DITH & YOUR ERROR TRACKBACKS".
Helpful Things book opened to the first few pages, it's an alphabetical list with one entry in black sans serif text on each line, and a hand on the left side holds the book open. The left page reads: "CRYSTAL WOMAN, CURSES, DEATH MAGIC, DEJA VU, DEMON WORSHIP, DEMONISED SOUVENIRS, DEMONS OR DEVILS, DEVAS, DIANETICS, DISEMBODIED SPIRITS, DIVINATION, DIVINE COUNTERPART, DIVINE FLAME HOLDER, DIVINE LIGHT MISSION, DJINNS, DJWAL KHUL, DOLLS" the right-hand page reads, "DOVES, DOVE KAMIKAZE, DOWING, DR PEPPER, DR WHO, DREAM WORK, DREAMCATCHERS, DRUGS, DRUIDISM, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, EARTH THERAPY, EASTER BUNNY, EASTER EGGS, EASTERN DANCES, EASTERN PHILOSOPHIES, ECKANAR, ECTOPPLASM
bottom of page