Dictionary of Animism

Solo Exhibition, Installation : Stockroom VIC, February 2022 + Floating Goose SA, May 2022

Creative Essay by Lara Merrington

Dictionary of Animism is a vocabulary of text-based sculptural objects that investigate the way that meaning extends beyond the rational and formal limits of language.

Grounded in an ongoing examination of hierarchies of knowledge that position language as foundational to meaning-making, Amber Cronin’s body of work looks to extend modes of representation as more widely distributed semiotic ecologies. Alluding to memories and experiences of more-than-human relationships, Dictionary of Animism is an anthology of contemplatively playful works that emerge out of lost purpose and lost meanings; a call to reflect on our relationship with the living world and the dormant lines of meaning that flow around us.

This project was supported by The Helpmann Academy’s Creative Development Grant Program.

An absence of language is far from an absence of meaning.