Tom Nichol­son, Jen­ny Wat­son, Mut­lu Çerkez, Peter Tyn­dall, Ian Whit­tle­sea, Emi­ly Floyd, Janet Burchill & Jen­nifer McCam­ley, Rose Nolan, Grant Stevens
WORD

Words are like time bombs. – Mike Parr

… seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant words or phras­es are sep­a­rat­ed from the stream of con­tin­u­ous talk (in art works) and giv­en a fresh exis­tence that can both trans­form and be trans­formed by the space they inhab­it. – Rose Nolan

My spe­cif­ic inter­ests are in how we con­struct and com­mu­ni­cate our real­i­ties through var­i­ous sym­bol­ic sys­tems. – Grant Stevens

The exhi­bi­tion WORD inves­ti­gates the use of text in the work of 12 dis­parate artists (Anna Schwartz Gallery artists and others). 

Text has been used dur­ing the 20^th Cen­tu­ry (and into the 21^st) as a pro­found­ly expres­sive tool in art mak­ing – rang­ing rst­ly from the cubist col­lages of Picas­so and Braque, where cig­a­rette pack­ets and tromp l’oeil news­pa­per print were utilised, through to the pop paint­ings of Warhol and Rauschen­berg, the emo­tion­al neon poet­ics of Tracey Emin and the rig­or of Joseph Kosuth’s pro­found­ly con­cep­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tions in phi­los­o­phy and lin­guis­tics. For many artists the use of text has become both a nec­es­sary and potent con­cep­tu­al tool and a medi­um in itself. 

WORD inves­ti­gates tex­tu­al­ly based imper­a­tives. Each work idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly probes the con­cep­tu­al world sur­round­ing (or prompt­ed by) text, and the pow­er that words and even indi­vid­ual let­ters, have as potent images in con­tem­po­rary art prac­tice — and the world. 

The exhi­bi­tion WORD, is not dis­cur­sive but remains inves­ti­ga­to­ry – in an attempt to regard ques­tions rather than answers.