Edel Assanti

‘Where did it all go wrong’ is a question I ask myself almost daily. American ecologist David Abram, whose 1996 book ‘The Spell of the Sensuous’ is the inspiration for this group show at Edel Assanti, thought he knew the answer: it all went to shit when we figured out how to write. The basis of his theory is that the codification of language into written form was a turning point for humanity that saw us sever our ties with nature. Not agrarianism, not industrialisation, but pen and bloody paper.  There’s language all over the opening room of this show. Or at least it looks like language. Mirtha Dermisache was an Argentinian artist who published endless written screeds and texts and diatribes, but all in indecipherable, invented alphabets. These amazing, subtle works look like alien love letters, or poems, or shopping lists, but they carry no actual linguistic meaning, they are ruptures of the written form, a breaking of established language borders that resets you in preparation for the rest of the show. A loose grouping of artists who think things are kind of messed up right now Two swirling, psychedelic boars bound across a dark, turbulent countryside in a Kat Lyons painting, rocks and crystals jut out of the wall in a Bronwyn Katz installation, a twisting sculpture on the floor by Marguerite Humeau looks like it was designed by bees, a head on a plinth by Anna Hulačová is filled with honeycomb, two earth-toned paintings by aboriginal Australian artist Yukultji...