February 1 – March 16 2014

Lynne Avadenka (US)
Peter Bellars (UK/Japan)
Nancy Campbell (UK)
Maung Day (Myanmar/Thailand)
Stephen Eastaugh (Australia/Argentina)
Bess Frimodig (Sweden)
Mark Graver (UK/New Zealand)
Jacqueline Gribbin (UK/Australia)
Ralph Kiggell (UK/Thailand)
Karen Helga Maurstig (Norway)
Ema Shin (Australia/Japan)
Cayla Skillin-Brauchle (US/India)
Sarita Sundar (India)

Organised by Ralph Kiggell in Bangkok with Mark Graver in NZ, Art at Wharepuke is very pleased to announce BEYOND WORDS: Artists and Translation. Including artists’ books, film and works on paper, BEYOND WORDS is a multimedia touring exhibition that explores text, language and interpretation through art.

All art involves a process of translation: from emotion to concept, action to expression. In BEYOND WORDS, 12 artists from 11 different countries create works that assess and describe acts of translation: how word, meaning and belief refract as they are transplanted across contexts, media and histories. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people move from country to country to find work, refuge, escape or because they are trafficked. At the same time, a global nonculture is proliferated through satellite and digital media. In the process (while English reigns as lingua franca), news and gossip, stories and myths are interpreted up and down the chain of languages. As information travels, its meaning and identity mutate.

Many of the artists in Beyond Words are bilingual, multilingual or are learning a new language and may live temporarily or permanently away from their land of birth. Through image alone or text and image, the works in this exhibition show an empathy or antipathy for the foreign, while allowing that displacement through translation provokes a slippage from which new philosophies may be discovered and new art evoked.

Works include English, Greenlandic, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Marathi, Burmese, Thai and Spanish texts and voices.

Images of Beyond Words