most normal town in England<\/a>” in 2017.<\/p>\n“I just wanted to turn that on its head,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This idea that Didcot is normal – it clearly isn’t. There isn’t such a thing.”<\/p>\n
At the time, Oxfordshire County Council said that, though the signage was amusing, it was “vandalism” and had the potential to distract drivers.<\/p>\n
Turning things on their head has remained a hallmark of @Athirty4’s work, whether it involves installing light switches on post boxes or creating garden gnomes supportive of low-traffic neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
“I like to burst people’s bubbles,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They might be walking along the street – doing their shopping or taking the dog for a walk – and suddenly they see something of mine.<\/p>\n
“For a second, they’re taken out of their world and into something else – questioning what they’re looking at.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bit like a magic trick. It’s about surprising people.”<\/p>\n
Despite his growing profile, @Athirty4 has kept his identity hidden – appearing masked during interviews and avoiding publicity, in the vein of Banksy.<\/p>\n
“After the road signs, it got so big it pushed me to be more ambitious,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I did things that were quite risky and irritated quite a few people, so I thought it was wise not to show my face.<\/p>\n
“And in an age of selfies and all that nonsense, I want to be the opposite. I’m not interested in that.<\/p>\n
“Plus, I’m not that good looking.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the pieces on display is a miniature recreation of the Didcot road sign prank that first brought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-485931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}