word

Exhibition date:
10 September 1999 to 29 November 1999
Location: 
NSW, Australia
Venue: 
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
City: 
New South Wales, Australia

word explored the use of text in contemporary Australian and international art.

Inspired by Arthur Stace, who inscribed the word ‘Eternity’ in public locations throughout Sydney, it brought together many recent artworks from Australia, and selectively from overseas, that depicted one word. Words appeared as signs rather than as elements of a narrative structure. Works which used proper names, exclamations, signatures, brand-names and slang. Some words conjured up times and places: Robert Indiana’s 1960s Love, Debra Dawes’ Sorry. A number of works exploited the declarative power of advertising signs or verbal forms of address, while others amplified or displaced the authorising power of a signature, or used images to emphasise or contradict the meaning of a word.

 

Text extracted from the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia website

Exhibition artworks