Word and Motion: Poetry and Material Experimentation post 1965

Through exhibition catalogues and rare books drawn from the Henry Moore Institute Research Library, Word and Motion explores the intersection of language and kinetic art from the mid-1960s to the present day.

In 1965, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA) held a seminal exhibition on concrete poetry entitled Between Poetry and Painting. This exhibition showcased work by artists and writers who experimented with the material dimensions of language and textuality, including now prominent figures such as Man Ray (1890-1976), Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) and Ken Cox (1927-68).

The ICA’s exhibition was a major moment in the history of postwar experimental poetry. However, as its ‘List of Artists’ shows, female artists were notably absent, despite their presence and innovations within experimental traditions that blurred the lines between poetry and art.

Taking this omission as a starting point, Word and Motion considers how material experimentations with language, form and flux have evolved since. Presenting works by Liliane Lijn, Caroline Bergvall and Mary Ellen Solt alongside Cobbing and Cox, this display reveals the moving, embodied dimensions of words above and beyond static, two-dimensional compositions.

The display also explores how changing public and private environments of words from the twentieth to the twenty-first century continue to provoke and evoke new forms of poetic experimentation.