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White
Noise (Aladdin, Arabian Nights, Orientalism)
156 x 98 x 15cm
Antique school blackboard (from Port Talbot), brass plaque,
white paint
Henry Hemming 2008
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In
these pieces, passages from carefully selected texts have been
applied using white paint onto antique school blackboards from
around England and Wales. Text is layered upon text yet the slate
(literally in some pieces) is at no point wiped clean. The educational
palimpsest of didactic transmission, lesson upon lesson, fact
transmitted after fact, is made literal. Like a model student
the blackboard retains all the information it receives. Yet put
together like this passages become unintelligible, until the blackboard
starts to resemble a white-board. The non-space between the lines
now dominate. With the addition of the brass plaque the shift
from textual symbolism towards aesthetic contemplation is complete:
you engage with the words on a visual rather than textual level.
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