Description

Where do words come from? The image of a woman blowing on a dandelion seed has been part of the cover design of The Larousse Dictionary for many years. Since I was a child, I have imagined words and letters waiting to be spoken or written, hovering like fish in an ocean or birds in a current of air. My creative process has developed as a series of poetic investigations exploring ideas and experiences through language. Creating links to early textile-arts technologies (spinning, weaving, papermaking) through playing with word meanings, book structures and narrative formats are all part of my approach to making art. Repetitive, circular rhythms, touch and transformation are strategies and processes I use to examine themes of absence, memory and time. I want to touch words; I want to touch the space between words. Inside Passage presents

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Publications

Where the Words Go : Karen Trask
Nancy Ring & Charlotte Jones (2010). Jones, Charlotte; Ring, Nancy. Where the Words Go : Karen Trask. Corner Brook, Nfld: Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2010.

Exhibition catalogue for “Where The Words Go” (2010).

Scale and Wonder in The Recent Work of Karen Trask
Nancy Ring (2009). Montréal, p. 6.

The author presents an analysis of the following works: Reading Proust (2005), Proust’s Bed: Waiting for a Kiss (2006), Cette Nuit Défaire (2008).


Ephemera

Press Release by Adam Kelly Morton

Taken from Concordia University’s website, Adam Kelly Morton’s press release describes of the exhibition, and offers quotes from the artist and curator about the work.

(excerpt from the press release)

Media Gallery curator Rae Staseson was immediately drawn to the installation’s potential, both for the sheer labour involved in its
creation and for its relevance within a communications context. “Her (Trask’s) work is about process and time and work,” says
Staseson. “She’s very interested in language, and how language shifts, changes, and disappears on us, and then comes back.”
14/05/2024, 16:14 Language arts – Concordia University

“Although often imprecise and regularly insufficient, words remain a principal tool of communication and an indispensable aid for
navigating a world undergoing rapid change,” Trask writes in reference to the theme of the work. “Constant change is also the
nature of language, and it is this ephemeral, transient nature that I find so fascinating.”

In contrast with the digital age, a work of art made from print media is of particular interest to Staseson, in spite of the fact that it
may seem dated. “We’re pushing boundaries, but the notion of print media, and the book, and language, you can’t get more of a
foundation in communication than that,” she says.

The investigation of older forms of media is of significance in communication studies, and Trask’s work is evocative in its
exploration. “Her work is multifaceted,” says Staseson. “There is a multiplicity of meaning that makes it really engaging.”