Text in art - The Writings on The Wall - by Michaela Hall

The writings on the wall

Text is such a powerful tool, slogans, manifestos and words are all more than just information, they’re expressive, can be both objective and subjective and can be used to provoke emotions, belief and critical thinking. We trust text, it’s black and white but presents so many opportunities and when text is used in the art world, it often has a very impressive result.

There isn’t quite anybody who can do this quite like American artist Jenny Holzer  who is famous for her striking installations featuring powerful and emotional words that nod to self – assurance, feminism, society and those thoughts that go through our minds day to day. Her works typically include flashing bright lights and digital text that takes over the space that they’re exhibited in and completely grab the attention of the viewer in their neon colours. In ‘New Corner’ (2011) we see beams of Led text claiming words from ‘War will be secret’ to ‘I smell you on my clothes’. The words in their neon glow and repetition across multiple forms seem to possess a new power and we pay more attention to their meaning than we would have before.

(Photos by Collin LaFleche for projects.jennyholzer.com)

Another artist who was famous for their use of  text in a very unique way is Japanese artist On Kawara. Their fascinating works explore chronological time and how we interact with time in our lives. The works span across multiple formats including painting and installation but all tend to include big block text that signifies a certain date or time, lime a timestamp. In the project ‘One Million Years’  the artist methodically filled two different books with date after date after date, the first one focuses on all of those who have lived and died from 998,031 BC to 1969 AD. The second is staring with 1993 AD and ends with the year 1,001,992 AD. The dates have been read out in different sections in galleries around the world and seem repetitive, obsessive and raw. Dates are a piece of text I think a lot of people can dismiss as just numbers, unless the numbers are of significance to an individual , and Kawara’s approach to time presented through text presented a whole new way to consider time and duration and the real deeper meaning behind the text

(Image courtesy of artbasel.com)

These pieces of work although vastly different in approach both do one thing, they make us look and read in a new way, they present pretty normal words in a way that seems anything but normal to us. The works represent that words , no matter how they are used, can not be underestimated and that language is a creative tool for us all.