I started working with text last year coming with a background of site-specific interventions, performative sculptures and installations. It is a way of opening my practice beyond the physical object (for example my sculptures) or immediate physical response to a site such as interventions. I strongly feel, it offers another layer to investigate my concerns and for a multi-disciplinary approach to making work.
I am interested in artistic practice that uses text / language as critique.
‘Routine game’ was my first text-based work. Each word is taken from everyday decision-making. Verbs were used in lower case as a non-imperative; suggesting options to choose or act upon – a performative quality. The ordinary manufactured object becomes de-pheripheralised and its primary function twisted for a linguistic purpose. Whereas the ‘Rules book series’ depicts phrases commonly used in workplace conversations. Injected with humour it not only reflects on the linguistic double meaning yet draws attention to a quite stereotypical veneer. Another perfomative text-based installation ‘Reality-Maintenance’ challenges the audience to question their position. Drawing on Berger/Luckmann’s ‘Social construction of reality’ the evident, twisted or made up titles and positions reflect humorously on various identities we take on.
Most recently, I installed site-specific text at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge as part of the project art:language:location. Applied to existing panels of an entrance area and linked to a ‘corridor of powers’ the words offered options for behaviour and actions.
Here at Westminster Reference Library I am de-contextualising text from a wider world of work (tbc).
Here is list edit #4
Comfort is on demand.
Talk about others.
Perform symbolic duties.
It is convenient.
Take pleasure.
The value does not change.
They frequently think.
Obviously, it depends.
Avoid fire-fighting.
It sounds typical.
You must not fail.
Do not offer gold.
