Coley often uses the idea of a ready-made to create his work.
For Coley, this can be both the location where the work is placed as well as the borrowed texts he re-presents to create new meaning.

The location for this work is a place of worship and the oldest surviving building in Brighton, St. Nicholas of Myra. It was the town’s parish church for over seven centuries and is still referred to today as the Mother Church of Brighton.

The words for You Imagine What You Desire are taken from a quote by the playwright and activist George Bernard Shaw; “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” *

The phrase is made manifest here in the form of a sculpture with illuminated lighting and scaffold, situated in an area of the building where a part of the congregation would normally sit.

The location and context of the sculpture completes the work, allowing for further contemplation of its possibilities.

In this sense You Imagine What You Desire is not fixed, and the theme of Edge and Shift might here be understood to be transient; posing shifting understandings of the work according to where it is encountered and the personal associations we project onto it as a result.

https://housebiennial.art/exhibition/nathan-coley-imagine-desire-portraits-dissension/ (26.11.2020)