: the place of text in recent art
22 July - 30 October 2011
Semâ Bekirovic, Erica van Horn & Simon Cutts, Niamh McCann, Cerith Wyn Evans, Takahiko Iimura, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Kay Rosen, Peter Downsbrough, Michael Stumpf, Tim Etchells.
Curated by Graham Allen and Matt Packer
IN OTHER WORDS explores relationships between art and text, featuring
artists that use words as material in works of sculpture, installation and video.
The visual and spatial possibilities of text have long been explored by artists
and writers. This interest in the visual dimension of language – the ways in
which we traditionally see through words to their apparent meaning – is
emphasised through artworks in the exhibition that question the
constructions of language, ideas of legibility and the distinctions between
reading and viewing.
In our present age of text-messaging and e-mails, the written word is both
pervasive and unstable; texts are easily corrected, manipulated and erased. A
series of thematic provocations prepared by Graham Allen are displayed
around the gallery as textual tangents to the artworks on display. Whether
digitised on a screen, painted on a wall, or printed on a page, a single text
can infer different meanings and significances according to its form of
presentation.
Many of the artworks in the exhibition are a response to the specific
architecture of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. In various instances, artworks use
the full extent of the gallery walls and populate window areas, ceilings and
floors. Other works seem to cast an architectural space of their own. In
different ways, these artworks invite viewers to consider how text can interact
with perceptions of space, as we stand, look and move through it.
public seminar
River Room, 5pm 28 September 2011 - further information here |
