Delivering writing into states of physicality centres Michael Dean’s research into the political properties of language pertaining to authorship and autonomy.
Specially-commissioned for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 designed by Peter Zumthor, Acts of Grass takes acting and reading as a means of delivering writing into physicality. Evoking subtle connections and parallels between the physicality of the printed script and the space of the garden, four acts attempt to function simultaneously, as both the outline of an intimacy which gave origin to the written work in the hand and a demonstration of an intimacy into which the work is delivered on being read.
Dean’s (Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1977) one person exhibitions include State of being apart in space, Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany; Cope, Herald Street, London; The Colour of Public, Kim? Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia (2011). Group exhibitions include Nothing Personal, Marcelle Alix, Paris (2011); Sculpture also dies, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France (2010); Punctuation Marks: text and language in modern British sculpture. Leeds City Art Gallery (2009). Dean lives and works in London.
