Art + Language

Early twentieth-century experiments in the visual arts and literature laid the foundations for text-based art practices that evolved throughout that century. These include the avant-garde visual poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and Kurt Schwitters, which anticipated the development in the 1950s and 1960s of Concrete Poetry, a hybrid artform that blurred boundaries between art and literature by expanding the expressive possibilities of language across typography, printmaking, sculpture, photography, and found objects. Words were arranged spatially on the page or in physical space, transforming poems into visual compositions in which the typeface, layout, and material presentation of text became as significant as linguistic meaning.

With its international reach, Concrete Poetry informed concurrent and subsequent conceptual art practices, where language itself became a central artistic medium. Across these forms, text functions as a visual, material, and conceptual element that encourages viewers to read, view, and experience language in new ways. Art + Language features works by some of Australia’s leading proponents of text-based art from the mid-1960s until today. The exhibition explores artists’ enduring engagement with language as a means for creative innovation, critical inquiry, and poetic expression.

A Geelong Gallery exhibition