Text in artworks

Text has been a recurrent theme throughout my art practice. Formally integrating text into visual material as word, subtitle or speech can extend the experience of the work. It directly and visually engages the viewer in ways that accompanying texts cannot.

Examples shown here include:

Horse Play

‘Horse Play’ part of Heartwood Artists exhibition in the historic Cambo Stables in Fife.
The horses are long gone from the premises and lifestyle of earlier times, but they live on in everyday language. Filling the stable walls with these sayings reminds us of their former place in our lives.

What si dyslexia? – teh unwrittne book

‘ What si dyslexia? – teh unwrittne book ‘ the artists own dyslexic typing on the subject of dyslexia is discarded and sealed in a perspex container. Exhibited as an artists book in Scotland, Lithuania and Australia and purchased by Royal Perth Hospital Australia.

Your words mean everything to me

‘Your words mean everything to me’ An Artists book with porcelain and words on parchment paper. Words are from ‘The Lettres to the immortal Beloved by Ludwig van Beethoven’

Borderline

‘Borderline’ the text is created in clear acrylic and can only be read by negotiating with the space and available light. Shown in the fruit store at Caol Ruadh beside the water of the Kyles of Bute.
‘Will a shadow hold the flow
Can a whisper fill the air
Can a hope uphold the land’

Catch

‘Catch’ a video created around text runs across 22 screens at Horsecross Arts in Perth Concert Hall.

Perhaps now is the time to fly

‘Perhaps now is the time to fly’ using botanical labels to position unexpected texts that reverse the order of giving information about the plants to suggesting states of mind and Being related to the viewer. Shown as part of Interventions at Aberfoyle National Park & Polaris Japan.

Flatland

‘Flatland’ text as part of an installation in Slice Yokohama Art Museum Japan. Also compressed into a single image see Images.

Moth

‘Moth’ utilising photographed graffiti within a digital image.

Busselton

‘Busselton’ utilizing existing text for a digital intervention – part of the ‘Being There’ project, taking the blue sky banner to many countries.