TYPOLOGY

Tag: language+text

  • Art by number: Ken Nicol (and Mel Bochner, and Mary Temple, and Roman Opalka)


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    On the tweeted advice of Leah Sandals, we stopped by MKG127 gallery for the last day of Ken Nicol’s show. Aside from an irrational desire for Cy Twombly books and a penchant for Bic four-colour pens, we personally share with Nicol a complete and not unwelcome inability to multitask. Perhaps this explains our delight in his show, titled Hundreds of Things, Volume 1, for which he executes extremely well-crafted permutations of the number 100 in a wide range of seemingly mundane, normally discarded materials. From his gallery’s website:

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  • Susan Hiller at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art


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    Presented as a wall-sized video projection, Susan Hiller’s The Last Silent Movie is a beautifully simple and deeply moving testimony to the ongoing obliteration of linguistic and cultural diversity in the wake of accelerating industrialization and globalization. Featuring simple white text on a black field accompanying words and phrases being uttered by the last speakers of twenty-five endangered or extinct languages, the video surprises and delights with the remarkable and unfamiliar sounds of languages such as Manx, Jerrais, Livonian, Potowatomi, Yao Kimmien, and Ubykh.

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  • Homebase for graffiti art on Camden


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    One thing that surprised me when I first got to Toronto was how great the graffiti is. All those empty laneways must make Toronto a perfect breeding ground for innovative, immersive street art on a scale and level of consistency that doesn’t seem possible in New York.

    As typophiles, the above mural on Homebase’s wall is a particular favorite of ours. Homebase is a storefront on Camden Street carrying graffiti art supplies, clothing and accessories. Click below for images of the retail space, with its eye-candy spray paint display.

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