The Thousands

Words are obviously essential for communication. Not only between people but also between people and assembly manuals, people and shelves, shelves and assembly manuals. It’s a vicious cycle ending in not knowing why you have so many extra parts.

Funnily enough, words are one of the most advanced forms of language and, most of the time, the easiest form of communication. Text has always been commonplace in fine art, be it as subject matter or as implement.**Going around the room, from work to work, you can imagine a game of word association taking place – each piece is a spontaneous and unreflective production of the piece before it. Words obviously being the centrifugal subject matter, the exhibition moves towards themes like their definition, their significance, their context and their appearance.

Each of the 12 artists really can ‘use their words’. The only surprising thing about this is the lack of puns, spoonerisms or double entendres. None of which would have gone ashtray.