Marina Roy is Vancouver-based artist and writer whose work explores the intersection between language and visual art. She received her BA in French Literature at Université Laval, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and her MFA from the University of British Columbia. She has shown nationally and internationally, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, the Or Gallery Berlin, Gallery Sumukha, Chennai & Bengaluru, India, and Chisenhale Gallery, London. Roy was recipient of the VIVA award in 2010. In 2001 she published sign after the x (Artspeak/Arsenal Pulp Press), a book that revolves around the letter X and its multiple meanings. She is currently working on the next book, titled Queuejumping. She is Associate Professor of Visual Art at the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia.
MARINA ROY
November 15, 2001
Artspeak is pleased to host the launch of Marina Roy’s new book “Sign After the X______”, (Arsenal Pulp Press). “X” is one of the most provocative representations in contemporary culture: a symbol of capital, power, excess and illicit desire. Based on the connection between language and “lack”, Roy investigates the letter “X” that is used in our culture as part of a complex sign system that encompasses the evolution of language back to its mythic origins.
Sign After the X _______
Title: Sign After the X _______
Category: Artist Book
Artist: Marina Roy
Writers: Marina Roy
Design: Dean Allen, Solo
Publisher: Advance Editions, Artspeak
Year published: 2001
Pages: 220pp
Cover: Paperback
Binding: Perfect Bound
Process: Offset
Features: 23 b&w images
Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1.5 cm
Weight: 312 g
ISBN: 1-55152-112-1
Price: $8 CDN
Based on the connection between language and lack, Sign after the x investigates the letter x that is used in our culture as mnemonic, pictographic, and linguistic sign system that encompasses the evolution of language back to its mythic origins.
Including Roy’s drawings, the book uses narrative, and the conventions of the dedication, preface, introduction, postscript, errata, index and so forth to form a compendium of x words that is part philosophical treatise on the foundations of image and text, part illustration, part math lesson, and part language primer.