THE DARK WOULD language art anthology - launch at Whitechapel Gallery

Bokeh, by Nayda Collazo-Llorens. Courtesy the artist and LMAK projects

Philip has been gathering and editing material for a large, international anthology of text art and poetry - THE DARK WOULD. Alongside the famous names are outsider artists, lesser known practioners and a small sampling of arthur+martha participants - all celebrating a tradition that hails back to the original grandpa of outsiders, William Blake.

Birthday, by George Widener. Courtesy Henry Boxer Gallery 

PRESS RELEASE

A pioneering anthology of text artists and poets will launch at Whitechapel Gallery April 11, 7.30-9pm, with talks/readings by artist Simon Patterson and poets Caroline Bergvall and Tony Lopez, plus a performance by artist Sarah Sanders.

THE DARK WOULD gathers work by over 100 contributors including some of the most noted artists and poets alive today: Richard Long, Jenny Holzer, Fiona Banner, Maggie O' Sullivan, Tacita Dean, Tom Phillips, Tom Raworth, Nja Mahdaoui, Lawrence Weiner, Susan Hiller, Tsang Kin-Wah, Charles Bernstein and many, many more.

This is a moment in time when poets and many artists share the same primary material: language. Conceptual art, vispo, text art, outsider art, conceptual poetry, flarf, concrete poetry, live art, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, sound scores... THE DARK WOULD is a compelling document, alchemising text into art into text.

The anthology is split between two volumes – paper and virtual. Many of the works are in two parts, speaking to one another across the paper/virtual divide, as a metaphor of dis/embodiment, considering time, mortality, grief and human traces in the natural world.

Sorry, by Christine Wong Yap. Courtesy the artist.

As Editor Philip Davenport writes: “THE DARK WOULD asks what it is to live in a body now, knowing that one day we won’t be here. Perhaps this is best done by people for whom language is itself a state of between-ness. Here is a gathering of artists who use language and poets who are in some wider sense artists.”

THE DARK WOULD anthology is available for purchase, £29.99 (plus P&P) order online from distributor Knives Forks & Spoons.

Still, by Márton Koppány. Courtesy the artist