Speech Patterns

Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell

2022

English

184 pages

Softcover with wrap around poster, 23.5 x 17 x 1.7 cm

ISBN 978-0-6481062-6-5

€ 27 / $30

Edited by Robert Cook

Texts by Lisa Radford, Diego Ramírez and Robert Cook

Speech Patterns unites the work of two compelling Australian artists, Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell who each mobilise the rhythms, harmonies and dissonances of language to deal with experiences of relocation and national identity. For Hernández – born in Mérida, Venezuela, and now based between Melbourne and Sydney – her practice is a way of keeping alive her connection to friends, family and place while calling on the spirit of protest to unsettle the given global disorder that has displaced her and her family. And for Campbell – born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and growing up in Melbourne's western suburbs – his work is a wryly humourous exploration of the layered and complicated contingencies of the ever-shifting Australian condition as it is embraced, repressed, and rebelled against.

Accompanying the exhibition Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbellat The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, the book enacts a vibrantly poetic conversation comprised of paintings, drawings, posters, banners and flags from across the span of their individual practices. The book features essays by artists and writers Lisa Radford and Diego Ramírez, and curator Robert Cook.