Sign Symbol Sound: An exhibition exploring language and creativity

4 September

11 October 2021

What are the signs, symbols and sounds that shape our communities and our environment? From experimental poetry and coded alphabets, to the communication of plants and fungi beneath our feet, Sign Symbol Sound is a new interdisciplinary exhibition exploring our language and creativity.

Taking place online from 4 September – 11 October 2021, Modern Art Oxford and Oxford Brookes University present Sign Symbol Sound, a collaborative art exhibition co-created by Modern Art Oxford volunteers. Celebrating works by people from across Oxfordshire, the exhibition asks us to celebrate and question where our languages come from, and how we can better communicate with one another and our environment.

Featured works in Sign Symbol Sound were selected from a county-wide call-out for images, sounds, text and objects that reflect individual experiences of language and creativity.

Selected artists in Sign Symbol Sound are: Sue Chamberlin, Emma Coleman-Jones, Xiaoyi Deng, Helen Ganly, Isis Amelie Hjorth, Angus Irvine, Barry Martynski, Nise McCulloch, Etain O’Carroll, Sarah Radice, Deshna Shah, Laura Smith, Lillian Tranborg, Izzy Treyvaud and Peter Vance.

Sign Symbol Sound is co-curated by: Martina Bani, Keren Golea, Alice Hackney, Selena Lyons, Andres Nava H, Kashmira Patel, Hamideh Rimaz, Allesandra Visintin, Kasia Ziniak, with Creative Associate, Laura Purseglove.

Sign Symbol Sound is a collaboration between Oxford Brookes University and Modern Art Oxford.

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Meet the artists

SUE CHAMBERLIN is an Oxfordshire-based contemporary artist, educator and chartered landscape architect who has been working in environmental and design practices for 20 years. Through her mixed media artworks, Chamberlin often explores the different ways we all experience the environment, exploring everyday landscapes, liminal edge-lands and the un-noticed through collected objects, drawings and recordings. (Image credit: Sue Chamberlin, Woodwide web).

EMMA COLEMAN-JONES is a biologist, environmentalist and artist with a lifelong love of natural history and wild places. Her field sketches are light, instinctive responses to the natural world, which explore patterns in nature and the ways in which trees, birds and other species define our interactions with time, place and season. (Image credit: Emma Coleman-Jones, Swallow Flight II. Ink on paper).

XIAOYI DENG is interested in silent things and how they are enlisted in the contemporary modern world through language and other relational effects. She was recently introduced to rowing and found it an absolutely fascinating communicative phenomenon. (Image credit: Xiaoyi Deng, Digital photograph.)

HELEN GANLY is a multidisciplinary artist using painting, drawing, printmaking, performance and installation. Her close observational studies and use of metaphors often lead to large scale individual or collaborative works. (Helen Ganly, Nest, 2021).

ISIS AMELIE HJORTH engages with playful exploration. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and, as a postdoctoral researcher, has studied participatory digital tools for artistic production and online work in developing nations. She is currently an MFA student at Oxford Brookes University and a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. (Image credit: Isis Amelie Hjorth, The silent H in the House of Hours transcends, loudly. Wood, ink, paper.)

ANGUS IRVINE challenges what it means to create, his unique approach to the role of assistants and volunteers tries to celebrate the narrative of dysfunction and strives to find unspoken beauty in anything. This series speaks to his fascination of design and tries to reflect the disorder of the past year. (Image credit: Angus Irvine, Disorder [design], 2021.)(Image credit: Angus Irvine, Disorder [design], 2021.)

BARRY MARTYNSKI originally studied Fine Art but spent his career working in historic building conservation before a recent diagnosis of Huntington's Disease prompted a return to his art. Barry likes to work with vibrant form and colour to explore themes of 'internal landscapes', helping him to come to terms with issues around loss of identity and communication. (Image credit: Barry Martynski, DNA. Acrylic on canvas).

NISE MCCULLOCH is a writer, poet and text based artist. Working in inks, Nise adopts mark-making and abstract techniques to explore the liminal spaces between text and art. She creates pieces that can be read across multiple layers of meaning and her work often invites arbitrary interpretation. In believing that from destruction comes creation, she works in an open semantic form, often repurposing broken books and abandoned texts to influence her work. (Image credit: Nise McCulloch, Nothing. Burnt paper, ink.)

ETAIN O’CARROLL is a photographer and writer interested in belonging and identity, the concept of home and community, and the language we use to describe it. Her work explores the relationship between place and behaviour and the influence of nature on our wellbeing. (Image credit: Etain O’Carroll, One Little Word, 2021.)

SARAH RADICE is an artist currently sculpting in stone, bronze and willow. In her art practice, Radice draws visual inspiration from ancient artefacts in museum collections and by witnessing the wild and abundant life in her garden. With these observations, she creates forms which express her intensely personal and private observations about life, while in conversation with the material, listening to its inclinations and being receptive to the creative spirit within her. (Image credit: Sarah Radice, Mother and Child, 2020. Limestone, walnut.)

DESHNA SHAH is a recent BFA graduate from the Ruskin School of Art, The University of Oxford. Based in Manchester and Oxford, Shah has a complex relationship to location, culture and belonging. She uses her work to question the residual impacts of relocation, judgment and the unspoken, especially within the South Asian diaspora. Living with dyslexia, Shah works to “overcome the restrictions of modern language” by combining languages from her childhood; Hindi, Gujarati, and English, to create her own alphabet, which she uses to narrate personal and social stories. (Image credit: Deshna Shah, Helium. Helium balloon, ink, digital photograph.)

LAURA SMITH is a Fine Art student at Oxford Brookes University, fascinated by the conflicted relationship between humans, animals, and technology. Through sculptural processes and digital media, she attempts to think beyond the human and opens new ways of thinking about animals. (Image credit: Laura Smith, Yerkish?, 2020.)

LILLIAN TRANBORG is an Oxford-based artist and sculptor who favours working outside with natural materials such as clay, wood, stone and found objects. She takes inspiration from nature, science and the things that link them. (Image credit: Lillian Tranborg, The Language of Hands. Mycelium, steel, wood.)

IZZY TREYVAUD is a maker and storyteller who uses art as a vehicle to explore themes such as body, form, gender, identity, existentialism, expression and connection. (Image credit: Izzy Treyvaud, 3.)

PETER VANCE formulates processes into which an input - be it a piece of text, an image or a sound - can be transformed into a new sensory output. The ordinary or overlooked is presented to the viewer as something new – something that is to be contemplated. (Image credit: Peter Vance, Units of Sound [detail], 2017. Cyanotype print.)

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Featured works in Sign Symbol Sound were selected from a county-wide call-out for images, sounds, text and objects that reflect individual experiences of language and creativity.

Sign Symbol Sound is co-curated by: Martina Bani, Keren Golea, Alice Hackney, Selena Lyons, Andres Nava H, Kashmira Patel, Hamideh Rimaz, Alessandra Visintin, Kasia Ziniak, with Creative Associate, Laura Purseglove.

Sign Symbol Sound is a collaboration between Oxford Brookes University and Modern Art Oxford. The project is generously supported by CHK Foundation.

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