WORDS FAIL ME

GONE TOMORROW GALLERY, 2008

“All is written” wrote Andre Breton. For this exhibition Richard Ducker is making a site-specific work that explores the loss of language using the predicament of the dyslexic child as its starting point. ‘I began to think about my personal moments of childhood shame and they mainly derived from my dyslexia, and consequent academic failure. So it felt appropriate to hide beneath the school desk, the weight of academic necessity above me and also concealing me. From this, separate elements began to evolve to build up a narrative of the often awkward relationship between the childhood and adult worlds.’  In this state, thoughts remain unknown, unnameable, and awaiting definition. Loaded with potential, meaning is left desiring description. Through using sculptural elements as suggestive props Ducker reveals this economic as a state of conflict, as well as loss that is inscribed in both the social and the personal.