MEMOIRS SCROLLED, 2000-2001
8 cotton canvas scrolls, 4 pairs:
Memoirs Scrolled I & II
Memoirs Scrolled III & IV
Memoirs Scrolled V & VI
Memoirs Scrolled VII & VIII)
Oil & acrylic on canvas, 2000-2001. Hung lengths are I & II 66”- III & IV 83” - V & VI 75” - VI & VII 19” (all are approximately between 18 ½ & 22 “ wide)
The Memoirs Scrolled series revisits Dale Henry’s lifelong fascination with word play, referencing and manipulating what he saw as the “tricky” depiction of text in the work of his visual art contemporaries. Henry believed he distinguished himself from this greater trend by attributing his own interest in words to a deep connection to literature, as it was through the literary scene that he had his first entrée into the art world at large. The scrolls depict words that, as Henry states, “straddle [...] sound-speech to become, but not yet, language.” They appear within cartoon-like speech bubbles, encompassing “universally understood visceral emanations” such as “AH! AHA! DRAT! OOF! LA! SHAZAM! OOPS! WHAM! THWACK! SPLAT! WHEW!” While referencing a modern trend in contemporary art, Henry situates these utterances within an ancient linguistic timeline using the classical image of a scroll. Henry writes, “I’ve reckoned from references my ancient (western) correlative juncture would be early Greek, which gracefully and gratefully removed all the glottals and many consonants in to vowels when they adapted the marked early efforts of Phoenicians and Canaanites. Those early Greeks could effectively broadcast into standardizations via their wide trading and invading.”
