2025
Disused acrylic signage, vinyl and hardware
150h x 50d x 90w cm
4th September 2025
The concept for this sculpture has been on my mind for years; I just needed to find the perfect time to create it – what better place than a library to showcase language?!
Many years ago, I bought a box of acrylic church sign letters that were no longer used. I initially made the 2 sculptures titled “Letter assemblage” but knew that one day I wanted to create something that would hang the letters so that they formed a word. The concept was that the shape of the acrylic not the letters themselves would form the word. I can’t remember how; but I discovered that one of the Chinese characters for word was one character and it formed the perfect shape for the acrylic – Chinese 言 meaning word, speech, character. There are actually 9 variations for the word, ‘word’ in Chinese (Footnote: 1).
I then sat with this concept for many years to solidify the idea. This year (2025) and having the opportunity to display my work at the Docklands library seemed like the perfect time to create it. I decided that I wanted all of the different major languages in Australia all over it, but what word to use? It was obvious the word ‘word’. I conceptually created the piece on computer making sure that the acrylic pieces correctly overlapped and hung to form the Chinese character, then a second design was created to show how they hung in the 3rd dimension so that they swung freely and didn’t collide. Then I needed to figure out how it was going to be constructed. I sourced the additional pieces required from fishing tackle accessories and the hardware shop. The last design concept was the use of transparent vinyl so that when the light went through it, it created a beautiful shadow on the library floor from navy to blue to light blue.
Once the piece was constructed, I went to the SBS website to find out the languages/countries SBS supports in Australia:
Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assyrian, Bangla, Bislama, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese, Crotian, Dari, Dinka, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hakhachin, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Karen, Khmer, Kirundi, Korean, Kurdish, Lao, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Mongolian, Nepali, Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Russian, Samoan, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tetum, Thai, Tibetan, Tigrinya, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese. In addition to the list I added English, one of the Aboriginal languages (of the 250+ groups), Braille and Auslan. I then started to collate all the different languages of the word ‘word’ on the computer using different fonts for the different words, but it looked awful, plus for every new language I needed to download a new font and there are 60+ languages! I thought why not handwrite every word myself. It was amazing!!!!! A revelation!!!!!! It was my way of bringing all the languages into one place, one style – my handwriting.
If you ever have 20 minutes to spare, I can absolutely recommend you go to a translation website, type in a word, any word in your primary language, then translate it to any language; preferably a character set that you’re unfamiliar with, then try to write it down yourself. After a short while I found that I understood how that letter was created by a human hand; it came naturally. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I understood the flow. A lot of the languages are so beautiful and have such fine details or a rhythm, that it just makes you want to perfect your writing of that language.
I then scanned each word and turned them into fluorescent orange vinyl then added them to a side of the acrylic letters; I’m hoping the orange glows at night. Some of the countries do double up so I’ve only included one example of each of the languages. As of writing this I’m still yet to add an Aboriginal or Bislama language to the piece. I’ve contacted SBS and the Victorian State Library who have been unable to help. I’ve recently contacted AIATSIS and The Melanie Jewson Foundation that specialise in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander & Bislama languages respectively, but I haven’t heard back as yet. If you know the translation for ‘word’ in an aboriginal language and the group it comes from, ditto for Bislama I would be thrilled and will add it.
I hope that this piece brings people together, that they look for their language and see a little bit of themselves reflected in it, plus to me, it signifies the amazing rich diversity of the world in one small way in one small piece in a simple word ‘word’.
1. Sourced from Google translation: English to Chinese (Simplified)