Stop Sign (2018) is one of the most conceptually precise works in Richard Hambleton's print canon - and one of the last editions published from his archive before his death in October 2017. The image documents one of the most audacious interventions of his career: the painting of his iconic Shadowman silhouette directly onto a functioning New York City stop sign, transforming a universal symbol of authority and caution into a canvas for the most unsettling figure in the history of street art.

The Stop Sign series had its origins in 2017, when ten original painted stop signs were exhibited at the Tribeca Film Festival during the premiere of Oren Jacoby's documentary Shadowman - Hambleton's last major public act before his death. The work encapsulates everything that defined his practice: the appropriation of urban infrastructure, the weaponisation of public space, the collision of institutional authority with the anarchic energy of the street. A stop sign commands compliance; a Shadowman commands fear. The combination of the two is simultaneously darkly comic and genuinely threatening - which is precisely where Hambleton always worked.

The giclée edition on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm paper - the premium fine art paper standard used for museum-quality print reproduction - translates the original urban object into a collectible format without diminishing its conceptual force. The octagonal geometry of the stop sign, rendered in its characteristic red and white against the gestural black explosion of the Shadowman, retains the full visual impact of the original intervention at the scale of the collector's wall.

Hambleton was dramatically rediscovered from 2009 onwards, with a series of major international exhibitions - including a celebrated collaboration with Giorgio Armani - and a surge in auction prices that has accelerated significantly following his death in October 2017. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

Stop Sign is a primary document of Hambleton's late conceptual practice and one of the most immediately recognisable images in his entire graphic output.