A 168-year-old strikethrough typeface commissioned for printing NSW Bill amendments is resurrected, bringing legacies of bureaucratic writing and governmental maintenance into dialogue with contemporary decolonial applications of the strikethrough. What might be made visible in the space between these two narratives?
Therese Keogh and Dennis Grauel invite a constellation of thinkers and artists into conversation around a set of refabricated type, fragments of typecasting paraphernalia, and a letterpress configured to print ideas and texts gestated from each conversation, with printed matter accumulating as the exhibition unfolds.
Three public round table conversations along with a series of workshops, material and written interventions, will feature guest appearances from Maria Giannacopoulos, Carolyn Craig, Joel Sherwood Spring, Micaela Sahhar, Tamsen Hopkinson, Shevaun Wright, Charlotte Brunero-Richards, Kenzee Patterson, and Stan Nelson.
Commissioned writings and images from Maria Giannacopoulos, Micaela Sahhar, Helen Hughes, Shellie Smith, Joel Sherwood Spring, Harun Morrison, Therese Keogh and Dennis Grauel will be launched in the publication On Specimens and Strikethroughs.
Technical expertise and fabrication support generously provided by: Stan Nelson, Subash Puthanveetil, Sebastian Barrett, Benjamin Willis, Charlotte Brunero-Richards, Dennis Bryans, and Zenobia Ahmed.
In 2023, UnMonumental (James Tylor and Matt Chun) published the UnMonumental Style Guide, which has influenced the development of Pica Erased. UnMonumental uses the strikethrough to reveal the illegitimacy of colonial possession and the inseparable nature of the languaging of colonial occupation from the Aboriginal Land it occupies. Pica Erased acknowledges the role of UnMonumental in formalising the strikethrough as an important method for interrupting colonial namings of place on Aboriginal Land.
Tin Sheds Gallery acknowledges the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands our exhibitions take place. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge of these lands, waterways and Country.
Top image: PICA ERASED, 2026, Therese Keogh & Dennis Grauel
Phone: (02) 9351 3115
Email: tin.sheds@sydney.edu.au
Address: 148 City Road, Darlington Sydney, NSW
