Word
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Located in an old railway workshop, Anna Schwartz’s cavernous Sydney space is not generous to petite art works. Fortunately the current exhibition, ‘Word’, fills the space wonderfully with a collection of pieces made over the last two decades by ten of the gallery’s artists and two invitees, Grant Stevens and Ian Whittlesea.
The works are bound loosely by the idea of exploring the potency of the written word in its various forms, though ‘Word’ also stands as testament to the influence of Art & Language in Australian art history – specifically Ian Burn, who was central to the group’s development in New York during the 1960s, after which he returned to Australia to work for the trade union movement and to teach. A similar politicization is discernable in the work of Tom Nicholson, who references Burn’s influence in his artist statement for the catalogue. While Nicholson’s highly conceptual, research-based practice at times falters somewhat in its presentation, Untitled Wall Drawing (2009) responds perfectly to the vast wall space, looming over the gallery like a spectre keeping watch. Consisting of five faint floor-to-ceiling columns of handwritten sentences, it details the history of national border construction around the world. This is an ongoing investigation for Nicholson who, in this instance, probes how a simple sentence (a date, the name of a country and a short description of a border reassignment) can carry collective memory by referencing momentous political moments. The bureaucratic tone of the prose also raises questions about the extent to which official versions of history affect one’s sense of the past.
Grant Stevens, Really Really (2007)
The surprise highlight of the show is a work by the young Queensland artist Grant Stevens who, like Nicholson, plays with sentence construction. By cutting, chopping and appropriating phrases from Hollywood films he questions the limits of language recognition and how closely it is linked to memory and learning methods. Hindered by the acoustics of the space, Really, Really (2007) is best experienced when standing directly in front so one can hear the faint classical music emanating from speakers on the floor. The structured score strangely complements the jumbled series of words – deconstructed fragments from familiar film clichés – as they pulse on a video screen like a miscued opening sequence to a Star Trek movie.
While these two pieces are thoughtful and fresh in their exploration of diverse influences in memory formation, other older works utilize familiar textual and linguistic strategies from past decades. Jenny Watson’s craft-inspired fabric painting Objectification (1990-1) evokes traditions of oral storytelling and narrative-based quilting, yet is adorned with a message meant for confrontation. For more than ten years Rose Nolan’s work has used protest props and Constructivist iconography in its exploration of slippages in meaning when words are utilized as a political tool or symbol. She is presented here with the deft if you can’t see my mirrors I can’t see you (2009). Elsewhere Peter Tyndall’s faux museum labels (detail, 1991) exemplify another dominant theme from the ‘90s, namely the deconstruction of museological practices. However, it is not all dense and weighty history lessons; a lovely irony is that one of the finest works in the show is actually in the catalogue. A telegram sent by Peter Tyndall to curators Anna Schwartz and Ruth Bain simply states:
‘TEXT FOR WORD CATALOGOS [sic] / HA HA
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Nicola Harvey
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