Text message #2

Paul Rooney, Letters that Rot (2010)

As a writer as well as a visual artist, I've often wrestled with the idea of bringing text into my art, but rarely see work that convinces me it's possible to do well.

However, Paul Rooney's new exhibition at Spacex suggests to me it might be worth another try. I haven't yet had a chance to see the narrative film Bellevue in its entirety, or to listen properly to the sound piece Words and Silence, but I was blown away by Letters that Rot and Small Talk at Saturday's opening, both of which are centred on written rather than spoken text.

Letters that Rot is a projected text, emanating from a pile of logs, which describes the 'thoughts' of a tree as it contemplates its own destruction at the hands of a postman. The text runs across the floor and up the wall before disappearing at into darkness at about waist height - so it seems to grow from the ground before it's chopped off. By a happy accident of location, reflections also bounce off the shiny floor and shimmer like rippling water over the projection. It's a fascinating piece of writing that would work well on the printed page, but that is really enhanced by its gallery presentation.

Small Talk seems concerned with the peculiar quality of subtitles. Two projections of a mundane scene at a petrol station sit at right angles to each other and converse (via subtitles) about the circumstances of their making, including a long digression about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I love French arthouse cinema but don't speak very good French, so ideas are relayed to me in precisely this unnatural, mediated way. I do sometimes wonder if these films would feel so profound if I didn't have to read them.

These works raise enough clever questions about language and narrative to keep a small army of academics busy, but what really matters is that the texts are rich and entertaining in their own right and the works are good to look at, not just to read. It can be done.

Paul Rooney: Bellevue, 2 October - 27 November 2010, Spacex, 45 Preston Street, ExeterEX1 1DF www.spacex.org.uk