“Words, words, words,” Hamlet said, dismissing the book he was reading as little more than meaningless noise. Written centuries ago, Shakespeare’s observation still feels strikingly relevant.
After all, words bombard us everywhere – on social media, in advertising, in emails, and occasionally still in hard-copy books. We are constantly reading, absorbing and producing them. They can collapse into noise, and yet, sometimes they are the headline, or conversely, the fine print. Sometimes they build and bring hope, but they can also hurt. Given all of this, the new exhibition at Rosebank’s CIRCA Gallery feels particularly timely and eternally apt all at once.
Put together by Everard Read Johannesburg’s head curator, Gina Molle, the show brings together artists who treat language as material. “Words appear not as neutral carriers of information,” she notes, “but as unstable forms, bent, fragmented, repeated and reassembled. Across painting, print and sculpture, language becomes architecture, poetry, and protest.”
The idea, she explains, began with a simple curiosity: “I started thinking about how many artists actually use text in their work. Sometimes it’s very obvious, sometimes it’s not obvious at all. I wanted to explore what they were thinking.” She adds, “Are the words important? Do they carry weight? Do they make the work, break it, or are they the work?”
For the love of word art
For me – a writer, a lover of words and a fan of artworks with clever slogans and striking text – this is an incredibly satisfying exhibition. There’s something especially compelling about a show that brings together a diverse range of artists around a single theme. And yet, their mediums, styles and approaches are completely different, resulting in works that feel varied, surprising and endlessly engaging.
Of course, “word art” is not a new idea either. From Ed Ruscha’s text-based works to Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-book speech bubbles, artists have long used language as material, a thread that continues today in the bold street typography of artists like Ben Eine. The bunch of locals on this exhibition are just continuing the sentence – or is that paragraph?
Many voices, one thread
Words, Words, Words brings together a wide-ranging group of artists, most of whom are represented by Everard Read. The impressive list includes Angus Taylor, Barbara Wildenboer, Boytchie, Brett Charles Seiler, Brett Murray, Deborah Bell, Gerhard Marx, Khanyisa Brancon, Liza Grobler, Lucinda Mudge, Mark Rautenbach, Mary Sibande, Michael MacGarry, Norman Catherine, Rosie Mudge, Talia Ramkilawan, Tamlin Blake, Teresa Kutala Firmino, Thonton Kabeya and Wayne Barker.
The show begins in CIRCA’s ground floor gallery with works by Blessing Ngobeni, Lady Skollie and Guy du Toit, after which visitors are led up the gallery’s iconic ramp into the main exhibition space.
Molle describes the challenge of bringing it all together as balancing many distinct voices while creating subtle connections between them. “There are so many voices, each important in its own way, even the quieter works. It’s about finding a thread that runs through them, whether it’s colour, mood, or something less obvious, while allowing each artist to hold their own space,” she says.
Standout stories
There are so many compelling works on show that it’s difficult to single out a few, but Johannesburg-based (and SMAC-represented) artist Frances Goodman’s banner work White knuckling it is a standout.
Made from bright pink and green acrylic nails, silicone and fibreglass chicken wire, the surface takes on a snake-like, almost scaly texture. The phrase refers to pushing through anxiety or stress by sheer force, a coping mechanism that may be necessary but is rarely the healthiest approach.
A personal favourite is Luca Evans’ Deflating basketball / pfft /. It’s crafted from birch, kiaat and sapele on pine. The Cape Town-based artist works across wood and text, with an experimental approach to carpentry and marquetry. Their pop-leaning work plays with ideas of language, failure, and humour. The piece features a deflated basketball alongside the word “pfft”, both the sound the ball makes and an expression of dismissal or contempt. It’s a gesture that echoes – in its own way – Hamlet’s weary “words, words, words”. There’s something smart, playful and oddly timeless about it.
Another piece that stopped me in my tracks is Willem Boshoff’s Alchemical sigils. It features 110 used and sterilised intrauterine devices (IUDs, or copper Ts) mounted on paper. One of South Africa’s leading conceptual artists, Boshoff often works with text and symbolism, here drawing on occult traditions where a “sigil” represents a specific intention or force. By naming these devices “sigils”, he shifts them from clinical tools of contraception into something symbolic, even mystical. These small plastic and copper forms take on a subtle power over life and death – the power to prevent life from occurring.
Back into the noise
Words, Words, Words makes its point quietly but definitively. In a moment of stillness, the exhibition invites you to really sit with words – what they say, what they mean, how they land.
Finally, leaving the contemplative gallery space, and stepping back out into the city and into its barrage of advertising, street signs, branding, social media, AI-generated noise, and the graffiti lining Joburg’s streets, you become far more aware of the words that surround you.
Words, Words, Words runs until 2 May at CIRCA Gallery, 2 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg.
Top image: Detail from Wayne Barker, Home
For more art news, go here.
Sign up to Currency’s weekly newsletters to receive your own bulletin of weekday news and weekend treats. Register here.
