Published March 2009
Forms and Shapes for a New Visual Language
Lining the street a glance up will show a chorus of lines and angles – Art Deco, Nouveau, (if you’re lucky), Modernism (good and sometimes just plain concrete), Neoclassicism, Federation and a longer list of seemingly undefinables. They sing, sometimes chant, a line of thought read both by our own experience and the history of the place, its inhabitants and the materials in use. Our streets echo with the various accents of these different voices – each a part of their own dialect as well as a bigger language read everyday.
How do these voices come to life: a vogue idea giving birth to a fashionable style, a trendy response to a tired tradition? The style, approach and concerns of an artist, be they a reaction or an evolution to their surrounds, drive the development of our wider cultural lingo. Presumably, in doing so, making it more relevant to the their time.
Issue 4 focuses on some of the voices in the art world that are putting together different sentences – that put forward a new sound – shapes and forms for a new visual language.