a word negated, a letter undone 2022

Silkscreen print on Wenzhou rice paper

97 x 300cm

Repetition implies pattern, pattern implies meaning. Until it doesn’t.

This work explores the relationship of the personalised, handwritten word and meaning, using a continuous progression of layered text that challenges and deceives the act of reading. Disrupting the conventions of how we perceive the written word, this work toys with the never-ending search for meaning and the innate need to understand pattern. At a distance the viewer assumes readability of the printed text, yet they are denied meaning as at a close proximity as the words form illegible, incomprehensible sentences in a “narrative” of which there is no conclusion. Using layering and obscurity, a game is made of the acts of looking and reading; what am I reading? What are these words saying? What does it mean?

Informed by Hanne Darboven’s exploration of seriality and the incomprehensible, a word negated, a letter undone is simultaneously draining the words of meaning and creating new patterns and implications through the extensive screen printing. It challenges viewers to look differently, to see through, to read beyond.