Glaswegian artist Martin Boyce has won the 2011 Turner prize with his atmospheric Do words have voices installation. His award winning installation is a development of his No Reflections work for the Venice Biennale 2009. Dundee Contemporary Arts curated his work at the Biennale and subsequently commissioned him to create two limited edition prints in conjunction with the project which can be found on CultureLabel here.
Martin creates what he calls ‘psychological landscapes’ and is interested in creating atmospheres where the indoor and the outdoor spaces can be experienced simultaneously. His prints make reference to the empty wooden interior of the artist’s bird box sculpture in the vacated Italian Palazzo; the holes in which simultaneously suggest the form of a head or mask. During the development of this project Boyce drew from a short text he had written with an abandoned zoo in mind: ‘warm dry stone and palm leaves, no elephants, no giraffes, no penguins, no brilliantly coloured birds…’.
In his prints this language of an abandoned garden is continued with the text ‘No Brilliantly Coloured Birds’ that tumbles out across the image. The form of the text stems from a central structural motif that forms a core of much of Boyce’s work. This motif is derived from an early black and white photograph of four geometric concrete trees sculpted by Joel and Jan Martel in 1925. Boyce explains:
‘While working on the Martel tree models I began to develop a linear repeat pattern with the central structure of the trees as the main motif. Over time I then began to notice the possibility of letters hidden within the lines of the repeat. As first I found an R, an S and an M then slowly and with much trial and error I found a good representation of every letter of the alphabet. Some letters were found upside down, some on their side…I allowed the letters to appear as they were found within the pattern…the relationship with falling fragments, autumnal leaves and the air blowing through architecture and nature seemed to fit perfectly with these tumbling letters.’ (Martin Boyce)
Martin Boyce also has a selection of limited edition work on sale through Dundee Contemporary Arts here.
