Phonemes

Phonemes are a series of small drawings, 20 x 20cm in sumi ink, charcoal and Gundaroo dirt on Rives BFK.  In linguistics a phoneme is the smallest distinctive unit of sound and in sign language it refers to the “basic elements of gesture and location”. I was attempting to devise a visual language around a linguistic system.  The drawings were useful to me in developing marks and processes that were suitable for my investigation but I found myself struggling with the language metaphor.  The more I looked into how language was structured, the more I found how culturally specific it was and how it seemed to operate quite differently from the visual arts.  The further I worked on the drawings in the land I realised I was actually trying to break down the signs and symbols which structured my thought processes.  Rather than building a new language I needed a new way of thinking.  The metaphor of language broke down for my research and I searched for another way of thinking about the visual arts that would be more appropriate for a cross-cultural dialogue.  These were important works to an ongoing series of works that continuously morph over the years but are broken down into paper sizes, 80 x 80 cm and 40 x 40 cm.  They are continuously worked on 'in situ' and back in the studio until they become 'active'.