H-I-C-A, Dalcrombie, Inverness, until 7 August 2011

HICA’s latest exhibition explores the relationship between leading exponents of Concrete Poetry in Brazil and Scotland: The Noigandres Poets; Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari and Scottish Poets Edwin Morgan and Ian Hamilton Finlay.

Perception of visual art and of language is one of the most interesting provocations of this show and although the exhibition centres on key works of Concrete Poetry which emerged in the 1950’s and 1960’s, viewing the exhibition also has a wider implication in terms of the creation and reception of visual language in a digital age.

Part of the exhibition

The way that spaces and text combine to create meaning in many of these works present the viewer with text in visual form and challenge expectation in relation to traditional poetic structures. Décio Pignatari’s 1956 poem Terra, presented as a wall painting with its repetitive use of the word earth and an “error”- “the duplication of the syllable ra (terr/ara)” breeds a new set of meanings within the structure of the poem and its visual composition; “ara a terra (ploughs the land), ter rara terra(to have a rare land), errar a terra(to be mistaken about the land), terra ara terra (land ploughs land).”

The visual form of the poem, a rectangular composition bisected in Y form to create an association with a ploughed furrow (or perhaps even the more fluid visual association of the branches of a river) reduces language to concrete elements, creating new forms and fertile textual ground from which a range of meanings can be explored. Visually the spaces between words are as important as recognition of text language in these works.

Edwin Morgan’s The Chaffinch Map of Scotland (1965), also presented as a wall painting opposite Pignatari’s Terra, is another example; here different Scots words for Chaffinch are arranged to create a map which visualises geographic, linguistic and natural distribution of the word/ bird. Morgan’s poetic cartography is also a pattern of sound, and the positioning of key works in the gallery space sets up an interesting dialogue between them, an international language where sound, pattern and form presented in a unique rural location actively inform each other.

The way that Cristal Forma, a poem by Haraldo de Campos (1958) is overlaid on the landscape outside, with vinyl lettering on the main gallery window overlooking Loch Ruthven, is very effective in presenting an ideological and creative concept over a conventional view or idea of Highland landscape. This tension or space between the window frame/ text and the scene beyond is interesting territory in itself, and can also be read as part of a wider process of cultural cartography. The placement and structure of the poem which uses four words in variable sequence; cristal/ crystal, forme/hunger, forma/form and de/of, suggests in the words of the poet; “The metaphorical hunger of form and form as a kind of hunger. Crystal as an ideogram of the process.”

Cristal Forma

There is a great deal for the viewer to unpack in this show and for anyone unfamiliar with Concrete Poetry or Art additional material to delve into including; Geraldo de Barros: Sobras em Obras, a film by Michel Favre, Augusto de Campos’s Concrete Poetry Manifesto and a series of transcribed interviews with the poet. Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 2003 interview is particularly interesting, giving insight into the context of the Noigandres Poets and wider association with exploration of language and form in other contemporary artistic disciplines such as music and film.

Sound recordings are also a feature of the exhibition, including poems by Edwin Morgan and a selection of works from Verbivocovisual, a poesia concreta em musica. Cidade city cite (1963) a poem by Augusto de Campos, uses overlapping recitation and manipulation of tone and pitch to progressively create a sense of spatial movement and substrata of the city using the human voice as the core element. He pauses; dwelling on key words in this journey, then descends into a soundscape of voice which multiplies the sense of intersecting urban lives. Although the specific meanings of words are not known (presumably unless you speak Portuguese), the effect of a human voice is immediate and manipulation of sound, together with the rhythm of the language and fluid poetic form provides the listener with multiple departure points for contemplation. The spaces between the spoken word/ text as a single core element construct potential meanings of their own.

A series of lithographs from The Blue and the Brown Poems (1968) by Ian Hamilton Finlay utilise form, colour and text in ways that are both playful and ingenious. In Ajar, he visually wedges the letters/words vertically, while in wave/rock, the blue word wave overlaps the earthy red of the word rock, a visual, physical and ideological fusion of two ideas/ words/ representations. Broken/ Heartbroken visually separates sound in the parallel of the soft “h” and the more bitter suggestion of the “t” which run diagonally through the centre of the composition. The warmth of orange and the coolness of blue also define the relationship purely in terms of colour. Within this seemingly simple and clever arrangement of words there are multiple ways of reading or visualising the text.

Poemobiles by Augusto de Campos and Julio Plaza (2010) are an intriguing series of folded three dimensional structures in which how we read text and form become folded in a variable origami-like arrangements. One such structure in yellow/red/blue progressively utilises separation of colour, word and rhythm of language to create form in three dimensions aurally as well as physically. The viewer visually reads the work according to the shape of the overall structure and in relation to recognition of structural changes in the sequence and arrangement of words.

Displayed in a linear fashion, traditional patterns of recognition are disrupted by the poetic/ creative process, and present the possibility of a new form of language as communication. Meaning is not the product of an absolute definitive statement here but left hanging, much like the title of the work. Although yellow/red/blue is of an intimate scale and an interior experience, it also feels like an architectural model in the way it is presented, as part of a sequence of structural possibilities.

Although Concrete Poetry is a type of Visual Poetry, the most satisfying readings of these works seem to come from further investigation of original and supporting text and consideration of the function of language both visual and written/verbal. Although the Concrete methodology raises many questions about Art, perception and communication, members of the general public could potentially be frustrated by the text-laden nature of the visual experience. The exhibition will culminate with a talk on the work of the Brazilian poet and author of the Neo-Concrete Manifesto Ferriera Gullar, by Dr Nuno Sacramento, Director of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop at HICA on Sunday August 7th at 3pm.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

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