- Venue
- So Far the Future
- Location
- London
The gallery curates collaborative text-based projects in the heart of Holborn, generally concerned with the visual relationship between the visual arts and text; through the use of typography and language as a vehicle of creation. The current exhibition, Imaginary Menagerie involves the exploration of nineteen artists under the brief ‘language is difficult’. The artists are widespread globally and the works take on a variety of forms, managing different mediums. On visiting Imaginary Menagerie it was evident that the exhibition is purposeful in allowing you to consider more the complexities within text, letters, words and language. The explorations show a variety of ideas proposing concepts where each is concerned with the depths within the typographic world.
The exhibition fits naturally into the small gallery in which you are surrounded by works and letters imposing an almost book-like realm or space. The intensity and concentrated temperament enforces a real insight to the complexities of language that can generally be overlooked. Imaginary Menagerie allows the beauty of language to expand from its usual form to create a whirlwind of linguistically genius ideas that take a step out of the norm through the use of manipulation, repetition, font and word plays.
On finding the gallery down a small discarded alley, adjacent to the high street in Holborn, I was pleasantly comforted by its niche characteristics. Intended as a small-scale celebratory gallery, it succeeds in its lack of harsh fluorescent lighting and sound. It is clear I had entered an artistic hub and although it was silent, the humming of typographic creativity surrounded me. Greeted by a large neon installment (Myerscough 2011) the space is exciting and proposes offers of language exposing more than merely a standard sentence. Sean Connery and the recent lootings here spurred Atelier Dreibholz’s ‘Shut up the Shutters’ seemingly an odd combination but infectiously alluring. Dreibholz’s use of creating a slogan in reference to the lootings combined with Sean Connery’s notorious speech impediment provides perfect humorously ironic alliteration. The slogan ‘shut up the shutters and sit in the shop’ is directly printed onto the wall of the gallery using vinyl lettering with a box of A6 postcards of Sean Connery’s face free to take away I feel this humorous token creates a relationship between the artist and visitor as they effectively take away a piece of the exhibition with them. Contrastingly to the other works within this collection, Dreibholz is concerned with current affairs happening in Britain but cleverly combines this with a light-hearted element allowing viewers to continue unconcerned about the real intention of the work due to his seemingly flippant take. The diversity of intentions within the exhibition exposes the opportunities available within typography.
Also taking on the alliterative form, Andreas Pohancenik’s ‘Cosmic Comets’ and the repetition of ‘s’ allows the tongue twister to occur through the use of four two syllable words arranged in horizontal order. The print has a robotic surge suggesting when read aloud should pose a monotonous robotic tone. The use of screen print onto a NASA space blanket enhances its reference to the subject of comets; the lettering also plays on this. The print holds an almost dazzling nature and adds a playful element; it could almost be a flashing sign to enhance its purpose. Unfortunately, although this piece was exciting, disappointment brewed with its situation within the gallery as it took home in a corner out of the main buzz of the space that I feel damaged its viewing potential.
An intriguing element to the exhibition was Polina Pakhomova’s ‘Promises’ which takes a hand written text onto transparent paper and is photocopied multiple times until illegible. It is a compact and intense piece that evokes a haphazard and chaotic air, which adds to its alluring nature. Its portrayal, in the literal written sense, of the Russian tongue twister based upon unrealized promises unveils and almost panicked stress to succeed. The writing style stresses the manic push to, in a sense, un-twist the tongue twister. The way the sheets have been physically stacked before photocopying enhances the repetition of physically repeating the tongue twister highlighting the effort Pakhomova has inserted to convey this. The illegible nature created through photocopying lures the viewer in to try and view areas as legible where in fact they are not, shapes have merely been created within the stacked letters allowing the text to take on a new form, more abstract than before. I feel this conquered the concepts of words holding compulsory meanings, breaking them down to letters that have been arranged to propose a new idea.
Continuing through the gallery, the laser-cut loops of Cartlidge Levene’s ‘Five Palindromes’ are twisted in such a way to enhance the flexibility of the words themselves. Hung from dramatically draped red cables and encasing light bulbs in order to spread the letters around the room through the holes within the card loops. The palindromes are miscellaneous and have no specific reference or relation to one another for example: ‘Never odd or Even’, ‘So many Dynamos’ and ‘Too hot to hoot’. The way in which they are presented suggests a real importance and content to the installation as it takes up the most space within the exhibition but ironically it is just playing with words creating light-hearted phrases such as ‘Party Boobytrap’.
The experiments sit within the studio space-come-gallery with ease with evidence that it was created in the same environment that it’s exposed to the public, leaving it in situ. I found the exhibition liberating holding depth and a genuine concern for experimentation within typography. The concentration of creation concerning typographic matters and the ‘difficulties of language’ opened a gateway to working with this media as a source.
