Len Lye

You can make words be things – you always have – and that is better than trying to make them say things. – Alistair Reid in a letter to Lye, 1961

The exhibition Len Lye ~ Body English explores the cross-fertilisation of text and image in Lye’s writing, drawing, film, and photography. Though sceptical of film or art that was illustrative or ‘literary’, Lye’s visual and written works were often related to one another. He designed, for example, the cover of his own book, No Trouble, and frequently spun mythologies out of his sketches and paintings. In photograms and films, Lye created layers of images and text, at times to cement their relation, at times to confound their distinction. Lye used the term ‘Body English’ to describe a consciousness of the body he wanted to create in his work, as well as for his ‘verbal doodles’, saying:

I find that a body English kind of language helps one to use a string of words as an umbilical cord from brain to body. … Grammatically it may not figure; anatomically, it’s quite impracticable; figuratively, there’s a flow and ebb of thought and feeling.

Looking at the close relationship between text and image in Lye’s graphic work, Len Lye ~ Body English suggests that his verbal and visual art spring from this same interest in primary sense experience.

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Len Lye - Body English