Martina Copley

song of an unseen bird, 2017

I was reader now (E.D), 2013-2014. Installation detail, graphite on trace paper, paper, ink, 11 pages, 27.9 x 21cm. Annotations by readers of publications of poems by Emily Dickinson sourced from Australian public libraries. each. Unhidden, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne. Curator Kali Michailidis. Photograph Theresa Harrison

Song of an unseen bird, 2015, 2017. Installation detail, hand cast aluminium, dimensions various. Unhidden, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne. Curator Kali Michailidis. Photograph Theresa Harrison

I was reader now (E.D), 2013-2014. Detail. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Vol. 2, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. [Poems 495-1176, 1861-1870.] Graphite on trace paper, paper, ink, 27.9 x 21cm.

<p>Aristophanes’ (300 B.C.E.) little dots of ink allowed readers to annotate their unbroken streams of text with pauses for breath and effect. Thinking of punctuation as a reordering of the unreadability of written text, this work casts stick notes as early commas. A mimesis that is shifted to bring attention, the cast sticks, strewn on the ground as you would find them, are not other than themselves. Found punctuation on the floor as page. The breath in the verse.</p>

Aristophanes’ (300 B.C.E.) little dots of ink allowed readers to annotate their unbroken streams of text with pauses for breath and effect. Thinking of punctuation as a reordering of the unreadability of written text, this work casts stick notes as early commas. A mimesis that is shifted to bring attention, the cast sticks, strewn on the ground as you would find them, are not other than themselves. Found punctuation on the floor as page. The breath in the verse.