Emily Floyd

#Umlauts

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Renowned Australian artist Emily Floyd is known for her text-based sculptures and pedagogically-inspired works which combine formal concerns with an interest in the legacies of modernism. Floyd’s 2019 exhibition ‘Anti-totalitarian Vectors’, held at Anna Schwartz Gallery, showcased a series of works inspired by the texts of Ágnes Heller.

An ‘umlaut’ is used over a vowel in the Hungarian or German languages to indicate a different vowel quality, usually fronting or rounding. Floyd’s sculptural Umlauts envision speculative fragments of a Hungarian letterpress.

Cast in bronze with a black patina finish, Floyd worked with UAP’s Brisbane foundry to create edition.

Not all philosophical Characters are shaped the same way, but they are mostly (originally) created from the words of ordinary language. Only translation alienates these characters from their original birthplace and transforms them into free-floating categories…
- Ágnes Heller, A Philosophy of History in Fragments (1993)