I-thought-linear-was-safe was an exhibition held in New Glasgow Society in April 2026. A small group show of four artists, it contained a collection of practices marking the quietness of text and the circle (O) particularly as a means of transmission.

Where the line constricts the voice and cuts across the mouth’s pathway to speech, the circle is both a gap, a voided O of silence, a non-verbal cycle, and an O of communication, a shout.

In articulating beyond dominant linguistics, inferences are important; the spherical open mouth, the shape words take and create as they are spoken, the arcs of letters, of sound waves, the dome, curve and lip of a bell. The work translates through other means, bypassing silenced methods of speech, in the body, with words (and their noise) revealed in step, by image and the drawn mark, by implication, by light or by will.

The show included a trialling of Tunnel Drawing #6, one half of the diptych ‘In Parallel’, which features in my degree show, and two accompanying sketches.

For my third piece, I presented a shelf of my sketchbooks as working documents that could be sifted through and handled, rather than precious, hidden or preserved behind glass. Documentation of the work involved photographing the sketchbook stack over time to capture different levels of exposure, or points of interest for audience members.

Thanks to the other artists involved in the exhibtion, Noé J. Bick, Ruth Babington and Jess Pickering. And to the GSASA for supporting the show.