Tag Archives: language

Robert Barry

20 October 2010 at 6.30pm

A visit to the acclaimed New York artist Robert Barry’s exhibition, Words and Music at the Common Guild.

This exhibition comprises a new installation conceived specially for The Common Guild by one of the most influential American artists associated with the emergence of conceptual art in the late 1960 and early 1970s. Robert Barry was a pioneer of conceptual art, abandoning painting in 1967 to produce site-specific installations, many of which were almost invisible to the viewer. These installations and actions relied on language to indicate their existence, shifting the presentation and reception of the work from image to text.

Since the early 1970s, language, or perhaps more correctly, words, have been central to Barry’s practice, which has since included typewriter drawings, wall pieces, slide projections and films as well as often cited actions such as gas releases and telepathic pieces. Barry is now perhaps best known for his large-scale text installations known as word spaces, which cast a selection of words in a given space from an ongoing and ever-changing collection.

Applied directly to the walls, windows and floors of the gallery, the words surround the viewer, reasserting the importance of the viewer at the heart of the art experience. As Barry explains, ‘Instead of trying to use text to convey an idea or meaning, I became interested in the individual power of the word to convey emotions or feelings.’

Although utterly conceptual in origin, Robert Barry’s work is essentially experiential. This rare opportunity to see his work brings the physical space between the words, the gallery and the viewer into focus.

Ciara Philips

18 November 2009 at 6.30pm

Utilizing a range of media including painting, knitting and screen-printing, Ciara Phillips combines two and three-dimensional works to create installations that draw upon a diverse range of interests – from Medieval woodcuts to Memphis design. Phillips’ practice has focused on drawing parallels between various historical periods and traditions by aligning them with observations of her immediate surroundings. This, coupled with her long-standing interest in combining text and image, is reflected in her current works, which hint at a tongue-in-cheek humour whilst also soliciting serious reflection.

Phillips has developed a new body of work that investigates the relationship of the female body to language. A development of recent work in which the alphabet has been employed as a framework from which to draw formal and conceptual associations, this exhibition combines silkscreen prints, murals and sculptural elements to create an installation that invites the viewer to consider language in its conceptual, physical and material manifestations. Using the body as a basis from which to make letters, Phillips draws upon the long-standing tradition of the human alphabet and seeks to propose new arrangements that offer playful possibilities for a personal interpretation of letters and language. The work in this exhibition was developed during the summer of 2009 whilst Phillips was on residency at Cove Park, and subsequently at the Glasgow Print Studios. An essay accompanies this exhibition from writer Ellie Herring.

Born in Ottawa, Canada, based in Glasgow, Phillips studied Fine Art at Queens University, Kingston (BFA 2000) and Glasgow School of Art (MFA 2004). Recent exhibitions include: Vowelled, Glasgow Project Room (2007); Scottish Collective, with Market Gallery at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2006); and The Clamour of Ornament, Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art 2006.

Incommunicado

25 March 2004 at 6pm

As promised, here is some more information about the upcoming Spin event in this impressive exhibition from the Hayward Gallery in London which opened here at the weekend. The Hayward blurb for the show is very illuminating, so I thought I would reproduce it here:

‘The desire to communicate can be a powerful motive behind the production of art, but it is the fallibility of communication that provides the subject for this exhibition.’

Curated by Margot Heller, Director of South London Gallery, Incommunicado brings together contemporary international film, video, photography, sculpture, drawing and text-based work to explore the manifestations and consequences of communication going wrong. The show examines personal misunderstandings, cultural and political clashes and linguistic and expressive limitations.

The importance of language in this context is introduced through work by Samuel Beckett, simultaneously signalling the writers influence on younger generations of visual artists. Central to the exhibition is Comedie (1966), a recently re-discovered film made in collaboration with Marin Karmitz, which reveals the poetic and absurd results of separating language from meaning. Other artists include: Pavel Buchler, Phil Coy, Omer Fast, Angus Fairhurst, Mona Hatoum, Christian Marclay, Bruce Nauman, Hirsch Perlman, Smith/Stewart, Erika Tan, Lawrence Weiner, Francesca Woodman and Chen Zhen.

You can probably tell from this that there will be elements of humour, absurdism, and poetry as well as a stimulating underlying theme to think about, and so it is highly appropriate (and gratifying) that we will have the artist John Beagles to help us negotiate it all! As well as being a lecturer in the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, John works alongside Graham Ramsay in their art practice as the video/performance/installation art duo Beagles and Ramsay. They have had solo shows all over the place including Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, and are a very popular part of the contemporary scene in Scotland. You might have seen them last year at Zenomap, Scotland’s contribution to the Venice Biennale, the Stills Gallery or at the Collective Gallery.