WAKEFIELD, UK.- The Yorkshire Sculpture Park will present Leo Fitzmaurice: Sometimes The Things You Touch Come True, on view 31 March – 10 June 2007. The bombardment of daily information and the impact it has on our lives is the context for work by Liverpool-based artist, Leo Fitzmaurice. Fitzmaurice’s work focuses on the materials of printed media and advertising; cutting away all logos and text from packets, bags and boxes, he removes visual ‘noise’ so that we consider what the products once signified and how they have changed. Robbed of any wording these odd, yet familiar objects are then reworked to reveal structures, sculptures or installations.

In this exhibition, packages appear like fabulous modernist buildings, placed together to form a miniature cityscape. Fitzmaurice also scavenges the discarded cardboard texts to make a shantytown on the periphery of the city. The dimension of sound is added: using similar strategies to muffle and distort radio information from the nearby Emley Moor Transmitter, a background buzz breathes uncertain life into this metropolis, creating another layer of ambiguity in the reading of the work.

Most often Fitzmaurice works at a small scale, transforming ephemeral objects with a kind of dumb simplicity. Other works include stacked brochures that form miniature landscapes, altered film posters, and a series of road signs - ARCADIA- that will be sited outdoors. In subverting commonplace visual signs and signals and manipulating scale, Fitzmaurice questions how the world around us is constructed, and considers our place within it.