"Empire Sign" and Mitre Bar sign, Tontine Lane

Image: © Barbara Carr Taken: 17 Apr 2013

Artwork by Douglas Gordon, 1997. Information from the booklet entitled 'The Merchant City Public Art Trail': "The sign is a mirror image of one briefly seen in Hitchcock's film 'Vertigo', so here we have something returned to the real world from the fictional. Says Gordon: 'I liked the fact that I could make an artwork that would not look like an artwork, I could make an object which was a copy of something that doesn't actually exist except in fiction, and the only way you can read it properly is to look in a mirror which is a place that does not really exist either'. The word Empire is a loaded one here, the source of so much of the wealth that the Merchant City was built on, but also a common name for cinemas and theatres. This work was originally sited in Brunswick Lane, opposite The Mitre Bar, a favourite with artists. When the Empire sign had to be moved because of development in that area, the sign from the defunct Mitre Bar came with it, to keep a sense of the original juxtaposition." The signs are illuminated every evening.

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