Rendered Illegible, 2024
Woodblock prints, ink on plywood
Rendered Illegible is a collection of 26 shapes resembling letterforms: an invented alphabet. The forms are not representative of the speech sounds of any language, but instead expand and reimagine the idea and purpose of written communication. The shapes were created by drawing and gathering references from ornamental aspects of typography and letterpress printing: decorative typefaces and printer’s ornaments. A particular visual influence has been the 19th century ornamented type that emerged as an outcome of Industrialisation, documented by the British lettering scholar Nicolette Gray. Rendered Illegible was created by abstracting parts of these intricate woodtype letterforms to create a new, imaginary alphabet. This process imbues the work with mystical qualities and links to the idea of fictional alphabets and utopian languages: the yet to be decoded Voynich Manuscript, Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky or Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota. By presenting a series of prints and wooden matrices so closely resembling letters, Rendered Illegible asks the viewer to take a step back and focus on the visual qualities of typography, rather than treating letters as carriers of information, which we are so accustomed to doing. By remystifying forms that feel familiar, the work aims to show the value of aesthetic qualities of language and communication in and of itself and encourages us to think about the visual forms which surround us on an everyday basis.
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