An Unresolved Doublet: Text as Material in Visual Art

Liz Collini's work investigates the boundaries between text and image through formal reconstructions of written language. Her prints, drawings and paintings interrogate the appearance and content of language at the point where text and image converge and destabilise meaning. Liz often uses classical references as foundations for the investigation of contemporary concerns.

In this talk chaired by Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, she will describe the background to her work, from semiotic theory, textual play with ambiguities in meaning and the uncanniness of the written word, to the methods by which she finds and chooses language as material.

An exhibition in 2025 with her studio partner, the painter Lindsay Simons, drew inspiration from the ancient sibyls. Her search for modern-day equivalents led her to reframe women working in science as contemporary sibyls. Through close reading of the writings and papers of Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Ijeoma Uchegbu she discovered unexpected poetic language and rich metaphor, aligning with the epic poetry of Virgil and Ovid from which much of the sibyl mythology grew.

Collini's pieces emerge slowly from the studio after lengthy processes of deconstruction, classification and experimentation. Her current preoccupation is the point where visual art, poetry and science come together; an example is Nano I, on loan to the Wolfson College President. The sciences present a field where new language is generated at an extraordinary rate as new concepts and discoveries require new definitions. Collini sees her practice as a celebration of this complex language and its metaphors and a means of revealing its hidden richness.

She is interested in how AI might change both the language of science and the practice of language-based art, the opportunities for interdisciplinary research, and how universal the language of science is at a time of major global shifts.

Following a 20-year career as a manager in the UK health service, returned to education to study fine art at Middlesex University, subsequently graduating in 2007 with an MA in Fine Art Printmaking from the Royal College of Art.

Examples of her work are held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert and British Museums, the Text Art Archive at Bury Museum and Art Gallery, in Portugal’s National Library and on loan to the President’s Office at Wolfson College Cambridge.

Her work is included in numerous publications, including those developed from the Bury International Text Festivals. Works have been shown widely in the UK and abroad. She lives and works in London.

Organised by the Wolfson Arts Committee in collaboration with Wolfson College Research Networks, this event is open to all and free to attend - please book your place.

This event will take place in the Lee Hall which has step-free access and an accessible toilet.

If you have any questions, please contact our events team - [email protected]

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