Nathan Coley – There Will Be No Miracles Here, 2006

Nathan Coley’s works investigate the social and political impact of architecture and public space, and their influence on people’s behaviour and ways of thinking. Whether in installations, light sculptures, photography or video, Coley sees his artistic work as a means of establishing communication between a site and an audience: “Objects can speak in my absence”, he says. Nathan Coley’s work invites the viewer to reflect on, and engage with, issues of identity, ownership and belief.

Mounted on scaffolding, Nathan Coley’s illuminated signs consist of words taken from a variety of contexts, including extracts from historical texts, popular songs and snatches of conversation. The sentence There Will Be No Miracles Here appropriates a historical anecdote from the seventeenth century about a small village in Haute Savoie, France. There were unexplained bouts of hysteria in the village that the local administrative powers called “miracles”. To combat this, a large notice was put up saying “There will be no miracles here, by order of the king”. By simultaneously admitting and forbidding the possibility of divine intervention, the authorities sought to control public and physical space, but also, in an act of pride, to control invisible and metaphysical space. Through a reflection on the power struggle between State and Church, politics and religion, the rational and the spiritual, Nathan Coley’s work questions the belief systems that govern cities and societies.