Text-based art has been artistically vital through the 20th century, although often relegated to the domain of ‘ephemera’ or exhibition reading rooms rather than a focal point of a show. 'Words to Be Looked At' will celebrate the ways in which a young generation of artists are turning to language and text as a vital part of their work. The multisensory, diverse approaches included here encompass award-winning artist books, poetry, performative writing, algorithmically-generated text, scripts, code, adapted legal and governmental documents, sculpture, printmaking and creative investigations of the material properties of books. The exhibition, which includes 58 works, will celebrate diversity, criticality and internationalism, presenting a polyphony of creative and unconventional approaches to language, memory, silence, translation, untranslatability and the act of speaking.
 
The exhibition, located in the Library’s display cases and breakout area as well as other display cases in college, forms an outcome of Carey Young’s Creative Arts Fellowship at Wolfson, and will include new and recent works by renowned recent alumni of the Slade, including Matt Copson (who grew up in Oxford and has shown his work at the Serpentine Gallery and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris), Alvaro Barrington (recent exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York and Thaddeus Ropac, London), Moza Almatrooshi, Rhona Eve Clewes, Siobhan Coen, Jake Elwes, Tom Hardwick-Allan and Frankie Roberts. Other works are by current Slade students at undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD level.
 
Curated and organised by Carey Young, artist, Wolfson Creative Arts Fellow and Associate Professor in Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, with assistance from Dr. Sharon Morris, Professor, Slade School of Fine Art. Special thanks also to Fiona Wilkes, Librarian, Wolfson College.
 
Visitors to the show are advised to ask the Wolfson Lodge for a printed handout of works and map of college locations.
 
About the Slade School of Fine Art
The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, approaches the practice of contemporary art and the history and theories that inform it in an experimental, research-oriented and imaginative way. The Slade makes a significant contribution to the field of contemporary art both nationally and internationally. Slade alumni form an international community of leading contemporary artists who exhibit worldwide at major institutions including the Tate, MoMA, Hayward Gallery and at the Venice Biennale, and who have included a number of Turner Prize winners and nominees. 
 
Images:
'Owe Woe', James Berrington, 2019. Embossed £1 coin.
Detail from 'Doll', Niki Kolhandel, 2020. Ink on paper.
'I Looked Into the Void and Realised I Was Its Architect so I Wove This Here Story and Spun Away', Matt Copson, 2020. Ink on paper.