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Middling English explores some
of the pleasures and complexities of language use,
in and through writing. The exhibition brings together
multi-sensory elements – spoken pieces, audiophonic
compositions, printed broadsides and the strange
memory world of pop lyrics – all presented
through a stunning architectural installation. An
animated webpiece accompanies the installation into
the ether.
Caroline Bergvall is a Norwegian-
French national and long-term UK resident. An artist
and writer, she works
across media and writes in English and trans-English
modes. Middling English pursues
her interest in speech detail, language histories
and politics, verbal eclecticism and inventiveness
derived from various kinds of cultural displacement.
Middling English investigates
modes of writing, from the printed letter to a loose
realm of visual, audio, kinetic
and perceptual writing and reading environments.
Bergvall combines Chaucerian contemporaneity with
bilingual audioworks and spatial structures.
The artist has developed this exhibition with
a range of collaborators including the architectural
team DvsN,
sound artists Zahra Mani and Adam
Parkinson, designer Alex
Prokop and the voice of Nicholas
Rowe. A new exhibition publication, including
an exclusive interview between Caroline Bergvall
and artist Imogen Stidworthy, will be launched at
The
London Art Book Fair, 24 – 26
September (see Events).
Above: Image rendering,
architectural structure designed for Middling English
by DvsN
Caroline Bergvall: Middling English
is a John Hansard Gallery exhibition,
with support from the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC) and Office
for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Caroline
Bergvall is currently AHRC Research
Fellow in the Department of English,
University Southampton.
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