Photoglyphic: Penelope Davis
A glyph is an incised mark denoting a graphic symbol. In my exhibition, Photoglyphic, carved letters of the alphabet are cast in clear and pigmented resins to create 3-D objects, then arranged on a flatbed scanner with coloured gels and filters. The scans are taken at very high resolution and record the effects of light passing through layers of the letters in great detail, revealing scratches, bubbles and other imperfections.
Text, colour and light combine to create amalgams of letters that are recognisable as word forms, but unreadable as narrative, text becomes image.
In a world where there is an incessant and cacophonous stream of text presented on screens and other media, meaning is often reduced to slogans and hollow signs. Words seem drained of significance, the visual equivalent of white noise.
These works intend to reflect this state of affairs but also to slow the contemplation of words and language into something evocative, intriguing and mysterious, something that may help to rehabilitate an expanded rather than diminished field of possibilities for the glyphs of our contemporary world.
