Collective Movements

Language Is a River

Language Is a River features images, transcripts, interviews, artist’s pages and essays on video and audio-based works by six Australian and international artists participating in the eponymous exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art (27 November 2021 – 15 January 2022), curated by Hannah Mathews and Melissa Ratliff. Designed by Ella Sutherland, the catalogue documents words and works by artists Akil Ahamat, Archie Barry, Charlotte Prodger, Sarah Rodigari, Shen Xin and Wu Tsang alongside four poems by writer, editor and educator Ellen van Neerven, an introduction by exhibition co-curator Melissa Ratliff and an essay by curator Pip Wallis commissioned by Archie Barry. 

The publication and exhibition explore the wide territory between language as an indispensable but neutral system of communication and language as a means for rehearsing, performing and producing identity and power. Language Is a River is both a proposition and analogy under which the personal, political and poetic aspects of narrative and meaning-making can be considered. 

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96 pages, softcover, 22.5 x 17 cm, colour, English language with some Chinese and French text
Texts: Akil Ahamat, Ellen van Neerven, Charlotte Prodger, Melissa Ratliff, Sarah Rodigari, Shen Xin, Wu Tsang, Pip Wallis 
Introduction:Melissa Ratliff
Editors:Hannah Mathews and Melissa Ratliff
Design:Ella Sutherland
Edition:300
Year: 2021
ISBN:978-0-6481529-6-5
Published by:Monash University Museum of Art 

Publication photography courtesy of Perimeter Editions