A new exhibition opening at Manchester’s Holden Gallery this month explores the links between our language and the visual transmission of the message

On the surface, the act of translation is relatively simple – the everyday process of one thing being translated into another. With language there is usually an equivalent word or phrase, even if variations allow for some degree of preference or selection. As we move beyond language and start to translate from one type of thing to another, more complications occur.

How do ideas take on visual form? How might emotion turn into action? In the transmission of information there are always differences and distinctions which occur as part of the process.

For Break in Transmission there is a specific interest in the pauses, gaps and breaks that can happen along the way. This could occur for a number of reasons: through the natural shifts between language and the visual, an act of mis-translation (either deliberate or accidental), it could be the effects of a loss of language which relates to more specific conditions such as aphasia, dementia and other neurological states. The important question lies in what might be lost in these interruptions in the everyday and what significance it might generate.

Throughout the exhibition, there is a fascination with the process of the transmission of information and what happens when things are put under strain, or placed into a different context. The works show a diverse range of responses, but connects through artists who have a shared set of concerns in the pleasures and pitfalls of language, communication and meaning.

Holden Gallery

22nd January – 16th March 2016

Admission Free

Opening Hours: Monday – Friday 12-6pm, Thursday 12-7pm

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