Language and art

This week we looked at the close link between language and art. It didnt occur to me before, but after seeing some of the slides that Tessa showed us, i was introduced to just how close the links between our language and the art world. What got me thinking was the Semiotic theory Tessa mentioned. Where as Semiotic breaks down to the signified and the signifier, which are the thing and the thing describing the thing.
From the slides, I really liked the art by Rene Magritte-The treason of images. He combined language in the painting itself, 'This is not a pipe', suggesting this is only a picture of a pipe. It is stating the obvious, but he used the element of text along with the image of the pipe together, giving the viewer a clear statement of what the painting is about, abit sarcasm almost. In addition, we also looked at some different languages from different cultures. As some of the ancient languages like Egyptian/Chinese are written, almost to say 'drawn', by the word's meaning. This is where the text itself links tightly to art.

After the slide show, we as a class went to see art that deals with texts and art. We went to the talk of 'Unpacking my library' . The artists that interested me alot from the talk were Dan arps, Elizabeth Mcalpine and Bill Culbert. Thier works reinforced alot of what we talked about in class prior comming to the gallery.

One art I especailly liked was the artwork by Elizabeth Mcalpine. Which is an on going incomplete collection of post-cards featuring the London tower. Some of the cards are really old, black and white photos; and some are more recent. Each post-card have the photo of same landmark (London tower), however in each card the tower clock points a different minute. So when the collection is lined up, the clock would read the time of the day in order from morning to midnight. I think it's very clever to use the sense of time and images together to form an artwork like what Mcalpine did, and it's also very interesting how the old post-cards are mixed in with the new in the time order, so it gives me a sense of jumping back and forth within time when looking through the images.

I was rather inspired by what we did this week, to try something like this in my own practice maybe.
I always wanted, also was told that i should try to do some artworks that combines text and images together, to give a stronger sense of statement for my art. I found what i learnt this week quite useful, as it showed me alot of ideas that used images and text together.

So this is where i can build my ideas for my own art practices from.