More Than Words

MORE THAN WORDS

Exhibition dates: 16 May – 16 June 2012
Private View: Wednesday 23 May 6:30 – 8:30

Text – script – font – language – writing – prose – poetry – expression

Sara J Beazley – Jeremy May - María Noël – Francisca Prieto – Priscilla Purcell – Matthew Rose – Patricia Swannell – Thurle Wright

To celebrate two hundred years since the birth of Charles Dickens in February 1812 as well as the birth of Edward Lear in May the same year, More Than Words explores the relationship with words and art. This exhibition shows work by eight artists whose practice responds to different aspects of language and expression.

Sara J Beazley adopts motifs from vintage postcards, calligraphy and postage stamps found in antique markets in Asia and Europe. ‘Found’ phrases and images are united in these elegant prints, recapturing a historical setting with a contemporary sensibility. Sara combines heritage colours with brighter tones and creamy whites. Racing green is overlaid with vivid yellow or a flamboyant pink; marrying old with new, she employs traditional printing techniques such as etching, drypoint, embossing and silkscreen printing to produce contemporary and original images. Sara has created a new series of prints to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics and the Paralympics, drawing inspiration from London’s iconic landmarks in her signature style; this series of prints could be read as a postcard written to London itself.

Jeremy May transforms reclaimed books into unique pieces of jewellery carefully cut from the pages of the book. The layers of text and images are visible through the lacquered surface of each piece, which is painted and polished before being returned to the space in the book from whence it came. Jeremy trawls through book markets on his travels to foreign countries; each book chosen has a history; it was bought, read, written on, sold on or given as a gift. In time, it was passed on to a street vendor, a second hand book shop, or offered to Jeremy. Often geometric in shape, the form and colour of each piece is inspired by a specific quote from each respective book. The text of Ivanhoe or For Whom the Bell Tolls is buried within each unique piece of jewellery, only exposed at the surfaces, revealing a tantalising glimpse of the writer’s story.

María Noël’s art is influenced by literature and language; for More than words, she has created a piece in homage to the work of avant-garde composer John Cage, born one hundred years ago in 1912. This collage with lithograph features a variety of texts ( including an original letter from the artist’s father who taught Literature at the university in the United States at the time when Cage was doing his experiences). In Maria s words “Cage is the Duchamp of the sound world, an artist who broadened our scope of perception.” The composition of the collage reflects the conceptual nature of Cage’s work, which includes 4’33”, four minutes and thirty three of a pianist not playing the piano. When one listens to this piece it is not silence that the audience hears; the hum of an electric light or the sound of a person’s breathing; the audience hears more than music. Maria Noel‘s piece invites the viewer to visually listen to an image where written words refer to sounds that speak of silence. Born in Buenos Aires , Maria Noel studied Fine art and Philosophy.

Francisca Prieto salvages rare, but damaged books and gives them a new life in her artworks. The pieces in the series Between the Folds are created so that the viewer can see all of the pages of the book at once, yet one can not read the book conventionally. Francisca folds each page to frame the images from the book, thus creating her own visual narratives between each carefully selected image. For More than words, Francisca has created a piece using a book on medieval illuminated manuscripts, which includes decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations. The fine hand-coloured etched or lithographed plates have been arranged to emphasise their vivid colours and diversity. The piece has been worked as illuminated in itself as the letter ‘I’ stands as a decorated initial.

Priscilla Purcell explores different approaches to language, exploring the signs and symbols of communication, as well as our understanding and lack of understanding of language. As part of an on going project based on correspondence, Priscilla has created envelopes and letters from handmade papers which she posts to herself from around the world. From these letters, Priscilla has created a series of letter based works for the exhibition, where in place of the addressee, is the source of her inspiration. Following her extensive travels in Japan, China and Korea, Priscilla has reinterpreted the postage stamps from these countries. In Babel, Priscilla has used a combination automatic writing and mirror writing to denote the Biblical subject. While in Let music be the food of love, Priscilla has written the Shakespeare’s sonnet across one edge of the envelope, over the score of her ancestor Henry Purcell.

Matthew Rose has a varied practice including collage and printmaking. In his Paintings series, Matthew explores the idea of word as image. He has created seven screen prints which describe in minimal terms, the subject of a great master painting. The works are summated by their respective titles, so that Rembrant’s masterpiece becomes simply the text Jewish Bride, written in Dutch, English, French and German, with the different connotations the phrase projects in the respective language. Delving into the plethora of art history, Matthew renders works by Giotto, Munch and Vermeer, similarly. In the collage series America, Matthew tells stories through a fragmented visual narrative. Matthew’s sources images from magazines, conveying a nostalgic, but surreal view of 1950s America, while the text on the collages brings a fresh element of humour through unexpected comparisons.

Following a commission for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew at Wakehurst Place, Kew Gardens, highlighting the conservations work of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, Patricia Swannell has embarked upon a series of new drawings which portray the trees from Kew. Patricia draws ‘time’ portraits of trees. She creates an imaged cross section of each tree, with a seed from that tree marking the starting point and the name of the tree in English, Latin and its location written in repeated rings to echo the seasons in the life of the tree. The drawings convey both the endurance and the fragility of these magnificent trees, highlighting questions of both inheritance and legacy. The series Interval, relates to the time made manifest in the trees.

Thurle Wright creates works on paper, inspired by an interest in the systems and structures of language, in the ordering of knowledge, and in the storing and accessing of words. She transforms pages from books, atlases and newspapers and reconstructs them into structures and patterns, creating entirely new meanings. In The Craft of writing, the pages of the original book have been deconstructed into ribbons of individual sentences. These are aligned to re-imagine the open pages of a book; the words remain reassuringly intact, but the disordered sentences created a new nonsensical story. In Broken Routine, the pages from a Braille text are reconfigured into raise cones, emulating the three dimensional nature of the raised type. Through collage Thurle re-assembles text based source material and recreates it into unique and thoughtful pieces.