Mark Making: Asemic Art
An exhibition by Gareth Schott
Gareth Schott is a Professor in Media and Creative Technologies at Waikato University. While his day-to-day work is dominated by screens and the threats and promises of AI, his artistic practice reflects an enduring appreciation of penmanship and the practice of handwriting. As a young boy he developed a deep interest in calligraphy, obsessively practicing by reproducing passages of writing from his mother’s book collection. While calligraphy is focused on beautiful lettering, this work explores how ordinary handwriting also carries artistic and emotional weight, reflecting the mark maker’s touch, movement and style. This work celebrates traditional inscriptional technologies (in this case the humble pen) and its capacity to produce new aesthetic forms from everyday conventional practices (e.g. handwriting). The proposed set of works constitute asemic writing pieces, turning the script and movement of writing practices into images.
Gareth Schott’s work from afar deceives the viewer with its simple composition of graphic overlapping shapes. Playing in negative space, playing with geometry and proportions, these works on paper are meditative, compulsive and alluring. They pull the viewer into a universe that started with a short scribble and accumulated into a field of unity that feels delicate. He decisively puts down each mark plotted and planned onto the surface. An expressive abstract gesture that holds our attention for a moment until our eyes are forced to the neighbouring one, and the one after that. We fly over the surface studying each unique mark that is both traditional and ancient in that it conveys a signature language.
– Katherine Sehr, US asemic artist
The Nancy Caiger Gallery is open 11am-2pm from Wednesday to Saturday. If you’d like to visit this exhibition outside of these opening hours, please email [email protected]