The Long Line

In Arabic script a kashida stretches a letter so that a line can breathe. Nothing is added to the meaning, and yet the word is changed: it takes longer to read, and it sits differently on the page. This exhibition began with that small typographic courtesy and asked what happens when artists borrow it.

The answers are rarely about calligraphy. In Hall 1 a ribbon of lacquered steel runs thirty-one metres before it thins to nothing. In Hall 2 a floor drawing climbs two walls and stops just short of the ceiling. Twelve sheets of ink in Hall 3 are each the same stroke, pulled to a different length, so that the eye measures time rather than distance.

“Nothing is added to the meaning, and yet the word is changed.”

We have hung the show slowly on purpose. There are fewer works than the halls could hold, benches where you would expect walls, and a single route that does not hurry you back to the door. Several pieces only make sense from far away; one only makes sense if you sit down.

The exhibition continues into the calendar: a curator’s walk-through, a drawing workshop built on breath and a night of slow films. The catalogue, with new writing in Arabic and English, is in the shop and on the long table in the library.