Language as Origin
STRAND III
Writing as an early visual art form
This strand examines writing as one of humanity's earliest visual inventions. Before alphabets stabilised into systems of communication, marks functioned as images, symbolic gestures etched into cave walls, stone, and clay. Over centuries, these pictorial forms abstracted into letters, gradually losing visible traces of their origins.
The works in this section return attention to that lineage. By isolating and reconfiguring characters drawn from diverse writing systems, they reposition letters as sculptural and iconographic entities rather than transparent vessels for meaning. The familiar becomes strange; the functional becomes aesthetic.
In this context, typography is approached as visual archaeology — an excavation of form across cultures and time.
2022 Sculpture, Archival Ink on Giclée40cm × 30cm
Syncretic Forms
Syncretic Forms assembles characters derived from endangered and lesser-known writing systems into compact iconographic structures. Removed from their linguistic function, these forms are reorganised into composite glyphs that appear simultaneously ancient and unfamiliar.
The work reflects on cultural syncretism — the way symbols travel, merge, and adapt within cosmopolitan environments. By collapsing distinct scripts into unified visual entities, the series proposes identity as something constructed through convergence rather than singular origin.
MEDIUM
Archival ink on giclée paper
3d printed sculptural forms
SERIES
Open series of individual composite glyphs
EDITIONS
Limited print editions of 15
Limited Sculpture editions of 15
INSTALLATION FORMATS
The series may be exhibited as an installation of grouped works or as a distributed arrangement across a gallery wall. Individual glyphs can also function as standalone pieces or as elements within a larger mixed-strand exhibition.
2023 - Letraset on Bristol Hahnemühle40cm × 30cm
Letragrafika
Letragrafika employs transfer lettering to dislocate typographic fragments from their structural roles. Characters are stripped of semantic purpose and rearranged into sparse rhythmic compositions that suggest a notational system without decipherable code.
Precision of placement contrasts with the dissolution of meaning, foregrounding the tension between clarity and abstraction inherent within written language. The series emphasises the material history of typography while questioning its authority as a stable communicative device.
MEDIUM
Letraset transfer lettering on Bristol Hahnemühle paper
SERIES
Series of 50 original works
AVAILABILITY
Original works available individually
INSTALLATION FORMATS
Exhibited as a complete or partial grid of the 50-work series. The spacing and arrangement of the grid is responsive to wall dimensions, and partial selections can be curated to emphasise specific rhythmic or compositional qualities within the series.