Text

I've been thinking a lot about using text recently, more so than usual because I have considered how words and language are separate from vision. Although written words are visual things, their meaning is accessible to someone without sight. Watching the videos of Tommy Edison, particularly 'Intangible Concepts to a Blind Person', made me think about how language is able to transcend sight, allowing someone to understand something without having ever seen it (this applies to explaining unknown concepts to sighted people as well). I am also interested in words and how we learn them to begin with; to me language has intrinsic associations with childhood learning, building up letters into more complicated arrangements and meanings, and thinking of letters as individual entities not a means to an end.

I have been considering writing some pieces about the horizon and displaying them so that the text is written out around the room, as if a horizon line. I think this idea might be a little cliche so I wanted to investigate how other artists have used text in a more material and spatial way, perhaps displaying it in a way that is specific to the site or concept.

Lawrence Weiner

Someone recommended I look at the work of Lawrence Weiner, who is considered to be one of the leading conceptual artists emerging from New York in the 1960s; however, I was interested to read that he considers himself more of a sculptor than a conceptualist, especially as his works (that I have seen online) seem to be nearly all 2D, painted or transferred on walls, My surprise at this is not a criticism  - the works seem to occupy the space as much as any three dimensional sculpture might, in their meaning being interpreted jointly with the space, and their imposing presence. Weiner mentions in one interview that writing in the city "becomes archaeology rather than history" because of how it is always being covered up by other writing. Naturally I find this quite a poetic notion, of words being buried, in other people's words and in time; but even though they are buried they still exist, the words still read, the letters still have a relationship to each other in the way that he decided that they would. I found some relevance in Weiner's text to my own investigations (in particular the above work which hints at the horizon); Weiner uses very familiar words of known concepts, but in ambiguous sentences that juxtapose monumental and mundane ideas, as if the words are metaphorical or allusions to something else. 

I wonder whether the meaning of his work would be dramatically different if it was in a different format; surely 'a wall pitted by a single rifle shot' is doing the same job as Cornelia Parker's titles in that it is conveying information about an object. Perhaps the text being large and bold instead of small and unimposing is a clarification that the words themselves are the work, keeps the emphasis on them.... but then is the emphasis on the words as visual symbols or on their meaning? I think perhaps in Weiner's case it is both. 

Joseph Kosuth

Kosuth's 'Art as Idea as Idea' align with my thinking really rather a lot. Last assessment I used dictionary and reference definitions in my work as a away of suggesting that language is relative, and that associations are variable. I've been thinking a lot about metaphor and how one concept can represent another in everyday language. In his work, Kosuth was interested in how art is about making meaning; pointing the viewer towards definitions of words, and in the context of an art institution, highlights how meaning is made in a language-led society, and  also how it can be passed on. 

Kosuth has stated that it is the definition itself that is the work, even though it is shown in galleries a photographic print of the definitions in written text. I suppose, in a similar way to Weiner, this is something that will inevitably be questioned with text works. There is something problematic about language being presented in an art gallery as a 'picture' because it automatically references other conventional 'pictures' and their aesthetic properties. 

John Baldessari

I am still working on understanding John Baldessari's work as I think it is really complex, but as he often uses text I thought it would be worth logging him as a relevant artists here. It seems that he makes a lot of pieces which are self-referential, or convey an awareness of the space or setting in which they are shown. Baldessari uses irony and wit in order to dismantle ideas about the art institution and established norms. In all the works that I have seen of his, he uses capital letters for the text; I wonder if that has any significance at all, maybe in eliminating hierarchy between the letters and words, making it a most basic form of text. Indeed, i might observe that in the majority of text works I have seen by any artist, upper case is usually used and mostly with white writing on black or black on white. It is an obvious observation, but this high contrast focuses the text. It does not fade into the environment, but stands out, bold, as an artwork. I wonder, in the 60s, whether this was necessary to give it credibility as art.

Jenny Holzer

I saw the work of Jenny Holzer twice over the Summer, firstly at a solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Bruton, and then in the art gallery section at Dismaland. Its very different to the minimalist, very black and white works that I have so far mentioned - instead using rolling led screens of neon-coloured letters. The way the writing is displayed, and the connotations that accompany them, are as much a part of the message as the meaning of the words (unlike Kosuth). Holzer's works are compelling, there is a sense of suspense that draws you in as you wait for the text to unfold on the screen. If the writing was there in a big mass perhaps the viewer would not be so captivated; but because it is fleeting and the viewer is not in control, it is necessary to stand and wait and actively participate in/with the work.

I'm not a massive fan of Holzer's presentation for my own work - it is very effective for the politically charged messages that she uses, but such drama and theatricality would be inappropriate for the themes that I am looking at. Subtlety and delicacy are really important to me - I couldn't draw attention to the inconspicuous and mundane with such a showy and overbearing presentation.

Katie Paterson

I look to Katie Paterson's work often as I am really interested in the themes she explores and share a similarly minimal aesthetic. I was surprised when I recently looked on her website and discovered a new work I knew nothing about, but which is really very close to my current thinking and the way in which I approach my practice. These pieces are 'Ideas', works that cannot physically be made but are cast in silver as poetic haiku-like sentences. They remind me of the piece I presented for my last assessment, 'Not A Hair Out of Place' (gold-leafed dustpan brush bristle), because the text encourages the viewer to imagine the work even though it does not exist. I really love this work, it is so simple, so poetic, once again about futility and the limits of human capability, but also really true to the ideas process. I often have ideas that sound really beautiful but are very unrealistic, even impossible to make 9'Cube of Darkness' for instance. These sentences are also examples of the kind of 'high-contrast' statments that I have been working with, where two very different concepts are put together to say something about the other (such as I mentioned with Weiner).