ABSTRACT
As I catch the bus into Auckland University from Takapuna, I enjoy the familiar and relaxing view of the Auckland harbour and the approaching city from the height of the harbour bridge. All that changes once the bus comes off the bridge into Fanshawe Street. The first available urban wall space is taken up by advertising, in the form of a colourful advertisement for coke. From here visual advertising is relentless, flowing down the sides of towering buildings, on billboards that dominate the urban landscape trying to persuade me to tune into Rock FM, wash my hair with Fructis shampoo and to wear Jockey underwear-after all, this is the underwear of choice by All Black Dan Carter. These advertisements function as narratives in the city that, as Michel de Certeau states, ‘multiplies the myths of our desires and our memories by recounting them with the vocabulary of objects of consumption’ (de Certeau et al. 1998: 142-3). Among all of this visual overload, or as some, such as Auckland City councillors, would say, ‘visual pollution’,1 is a striking, simple black billboard with white writing that does not appear to be trying to sell me anything (see Figure 6.1).
