Rose Nolan:
The scale of language
Rose Nolan’s work invites us to read between the lines as she revels in repetition.
Image credit: Rose Nolan, Not So Sure this Works, 2005, hand hooked floor rug, 285 x 255 cm. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery © Rose Nolan
Rose, I would love to talk specifically about your relationship to words and text. Your works offer a visual explication of language and its complexity, yet text was not always such a dominant part of your practice. How did text become part of your work and when? What was the catalyst for this shift?
In retrospect, it wasn’t a particular moment or dramatic shift – for example, my very early hessian banners incorporated letters from the Russian cyrillic alphabet as formal, graphic devices, alongside other geometric shapes. Gradually, language as a material form made its way into my practice in a similar way to using found or recycled materials to create works. It’s just a different type of material that displays both formal and linguistic qualities that I may want to incorporate. In this way, form and content are enmeshed where construction is both process and metaphor. Letters are combined into words, and words into banners, sculptures and wall works.
You use ‘found text’ – I love this idea of readymade language. We live in a time with an abundance of words, but also in an era of fake news, where language is increasingly manipulated and almost weaponised.
I’m thinking too of how we use words in a ‘throw away’ sense. How do you choose your words, pardon the pun?
The reason why I think of language as a type of readymade is that it already exists in the world as part of a circulating system. And yes, the way language and meaning are changing and being manipulated is actually..Subscribe to read this article in full
