This textual intervention was commissioned by Guys Hoexplores the Greek and Latin roots of medical terminology and nomenclature.
The original meanings of these roots often had powerful mythological and poetic resonances and remembering these adds extra richness and depth to our understanding of medicine and to the experience of the BRC and CRF.
I am interested in the slippage of language from the semiotics of a known word to the calligraphic aesthetics and suggestibility of a random string of letters. For this commission I deployed suffixes and prefixes of medical terminology pertinent to the research occurring at the BRC/CRF into wall based word diamonds and palindromes cut from 10mm acrylic sheet and also applied as vinyl signage to the internal windows.
The vinyl flows through the space on the same datum line in bands of repeating palindromes so that the transparency of the window is disrupted by text that moves from almost recognisable medical language to almost nonsensical associations.
The word diamonds are works in their own right, framed and separate from the wall, operating on the boundary of the calligraphic and the semantic. The font, Gill Sans has a classical modernist monumentality and calm.
This commission was curated and managed by Modus Operandi, as part of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Art Commissioning Programme.
Related Links