Language is usually thought to have developed as a codified system for the naming of objects.  It is obvious, however, that language does not just name or describe pre-existing objects or realities.  Language is a system of communication deeply embedded in our culture, both creating and reflecting our social structures and our personal experiences.

As soon as we apply language we don't just describe the world around us, we also shape it and re-shape it.  Longin's photographs show us street scenes which have been made by human activity, then further enhanced by decoration.  He then superimposes one image over another, so that image refers to image.  One set of marks relates to another and than a third and so on.  In this way he comments not only on our compulsion to mark our environment but also on the process of mark making itself.

Language may not be able to create physical reality but it certainly creates social, psychological and cultural realities.  The way we experience the world is determined by the social and cultural conventions through which we perceive it.  Through language the world becomes significant and through significance the world becomes grounded in and determined by language and culture.

As Saussure tell us, language is made up of deep structures and surface structures.  Within its deep structures it contains a huge storehouse or lexicon of possible and potential meanings.  From these deep structures we choose what we want to say and how we will say it.  We then transpose our message to the surface level by means of words.  Words are signs made up of marks or sounds and the various meanings, which can be attached to those marks.

Because there are so many possible meanings there is not always a direct transference of meaning from the deep structures to the surface structures of language.  As T.S. Eliot says, "Words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden" we place on them.  They reach into the silence and 'slip and slide' with imprecision, because they seem so often to fail to say what we really want them to say.

This sort of cracking and slipping and sliding is what we see in Gosia's prints and paintings.  Most of these are made up of intricate patterns and textures forming a background or a deep structure.  Sliding and floating over these she has made marks, which look like some mysterious form of calligraphy.  The two levels are related by not quite connected, because we can never be sure whether or not our communications do connect with others and with the world outside of our own consciousness.

Sandra's images show what happens when connection does not take place.  They are full of isolated figures, alienated from their environments, hands reaching out, faces unable to speak, and empty chairs.  The compositions are fragmented, so that there is an overall space, but each image is confined to its own space.  One human image shows complete disorientation by being presented upside down.

Sandra has also created some three-dimensional conceptual works.  Teapots are wrapped in canvas and tied up with copper wire or barbed wire.  These are poignant signifiers of domestic comforts, silenced and threatened.

All of this failure to communicate can be cause for frustration and even despair but it can also be turned to an advantage.  Because the signs and images fail to connect at the surface or conscious level, the very displacements and fragmentations that they generate can be used to signify communication at an unconscious level.

This is what Barbara does with her dream images.  The open windows express our connection with a workd beyond that contained within our day-to-day existence.  The fish indicate our desires to plumb the depths of our unconscious.  The ladders, the birds and the floating figures indicate our desires to communicate with worlds above and beyond our conscious levels of communication and experience - with the world of dreams and of transcendent experience.

This exhibition offers a wide variety of art forms and techniques and it also offers challenging interpretations on the themes of language and communication.  These artists are all completely in control of their media and they have also intellectualized the subject matter in thought provoking and stimulating ways.