Text printed onto textile shown in different fonts - including comic sans...Bookman Old Style 11pt for the one shown singly
This is text printed on woven textile.
This is digital text, typed with all my finger [touch tap tactile] tips. Ambidextrous text.
As I start to type I don’t know if this is text about this exhibition or for this exhibition. Maybe all ‘fors’ are about. Maybe all about is for. All within can be outside when inside.
If you know me you might even be able to hear my voice as you read this, your mind’s ear at work; perhaps if it is not how you are used to hearing me it will not sound quite right. I wonder what voice you hear if you do not know me...your voice reading these words? What character? Some invention that you cannot explain to me?
Of course, right this minute, right now, these words are not printed on canvas they are appearing on a screen as I touch the letter pads. That history behind writing, behind language: the deep collaboration of generations of people speaking and writing [English in this case]. I could not be doing this without that – without you. The fullness of this could not be done without you or without my intention of making this readable. Oh and the program makers, computer makers...so many people involved in this one little bit of writing. Then the canvas...
Do you want to stand in a gallery reading words? [I could supply this text in some gallery notes to read later, but printed on paper, on layers of fibres from wood - Paper has been made of many different plant substances. Rag paper. I have made paper from nettles, from rhubarb; which makes a lovely brown tracing paper like sheet. The fibres when in solution align themselves with each other; that is why paper tears more cleanly one way than another - But of course it wouldn’t work so I won’t].
X marks the spot, “the intersection of lines across an axis denotes intentionality, even negation;” X is warp & weft of textile, “is the signature of the one without writing, X is a crossroads”[1] It is both negative and positive, binary bound. The point. Textile: created with/as a formal, flat, gridding...then it folds into three dimensions, enfolds, becomes pli-able, com-pli-cated
Can I be justified in pinning words to the gallery wall?
[1] Pajaczkowska, C. (2005). Stuff & Nonsense. (P. Barnett, & D. Ross, Eds.) Textile , 220-249. p. 234
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