Speech is code
2 November – 31 December 2009
Experimental poet Philip Davenport’s residency at 501 Artspace in Chongqing, China features input from several Chinese artists, in a sequence of English/Chinese text art works, titled Speech is Code.
Davenport has made a sequence of 8-word poems, which collage together ancient Chinese poems, lines from iconic conceptual and text art sources and modernist and postmodern poetry, finding parallels in form and intent and knitting together new meanings completely unintended by the originators.
Davenport frequently moves between literary and visual modes, exhibiting works as in situ billposter/poems in cities throughout Europe, in galleries and as 3D objects. His 2006 Heartshape Pornography series was handwritten onto artificial apples; in 2008 he relabelled street debris; 1998-2008 his Imaginary Missing People, poems made from missing person notices, were billposted in Berlin, Edinburgh, Reykjavik, Paris, London, Bilbao.
The Speech is Code pieces are written onto large pieces of semi-transparent paper, one side scripted in English the other Chinese, they co-exist and intermingle calligraphies, significations, syntaxes.
Principal artists involved are: Wang Jun, Mao Yanyang, Xu Guang Fu and Deng Chuan.
