Anyone in search of proof that dyslexia needn’t hold one back would be well advised to look at the burgeoning career of typographic artist Sam Winston. Indeed the young artist attributes much of his captivating work to the fact that his dyslexia helps him blur the boundaries between words and text, enabling him to disassociate their literal meanings and see their artistic potential as purely visual tools instead.
Click here to see more from the exhibition
The result is a collection of extraordinary printed artwork. Typed text is turned on its head, given a new character that forces the viewer to simultaneously read around the distortions but also ignore the familiarity and take in the image as a whole. The pleasing universality of Winston’s subject matter and images are clear in the extent to which his work has been noticed, and the calibre of places it has been exhibited: from arbiters of global cool, Colette in Paris and Comme des Garcons’ guerrilla store in Hong Kong, to London’s ICA and New York’s MoMA, as well as in more traditional establishments such as The Courtauld Institute and The British Library.
His latest venture celebrates the reopening of the Saison Poetry Library on London’s Southbank with an exhibition of new works entitled ‘Volume’. Inspired by the vast collection Winston’s piece de resistance is ‘A Full Folding Dictionary’- a colossal sculpture made from all twenty volumes of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary. The artist has unbelievably folded pages in on themselves to create a sweeping, snaking, solid form.
‘I love the fact that this object, the dictionary, contains everything we can say. It’s a physical record in ink and paper of our human language, and that’s a fascinating place to start an artwork,’ says Winston of the project.
INFORMATION
- Website
- http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk
- Telephone
- 44.20 7921 0664
- Address
- Saison Poetry Library
Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre
London SE1
