about

artist statement:

My work explores the tension between the fluidity of language and the rigidity of written text. As my practice has evolved, it has moved toward more conceptual forms of text art where language is often obscured, fragmented, or entirely unreadable. I’m interested in how meaning breaks down when text becomes visual rather than verbal, and what’s left when reading is no longer the primary mode of engagement.

Influenced by text art, asemic writing, redaction and graffiti, I deconstruct traditional calligraphic and typographic systems I was trained in. Text becomes material, something to be layered, erased, or abstracted, probing the shifting role of the reader, no longer a decoder of language, but a participant in its reinterpretation.


bio tldr: 

Words. I have spent my life working with words. I studied words. I wrote words. I designed words. I painted words. And now I spurn them.

I am an artist based in the UK and my practice focuses on my love/hate relationship with language using traditional lettering and calligraphic techniques combined with a deconstructed composition process.

This exploration of the use of communication stems from my background. In the late 1990s, I founded a design agency in London and ran this for ten years, working with corporate clients. In 2011, I began an artist practice (under a different name) taking text onto the streets of London. Over 14 years, this distinctive art has featured in numerous exhibitions.

During the Covid lockdowns, I experienced a lack of faith in the communication business and I began experimenting with non-semantic, post-literate writing. Realising this work needs a life of its own, I now concentrate on a new, largely digital practice under the name altgnon.

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bio in depth:

The story behind my art takes me from typography student, to accessible designer, to street artist, to fine artist and finally to post-literate artist.

I was always fascinated by letters and typography. I was taught to read via a progressive system called the Initial Teaching Alphabet. The ITA was developed by Sir James Pitman (the grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of a system of shorthand) and it included 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, an extra 14 characters to represent sounds such as ‘oo’ and ‘th’ and ‘simplified’ spelling. It left its mark on me but I’m not shur it helpt my speling.

At college, I studied letterforms, along with graphic art and signwriting. I admired the post-modern deconstructions of David Carson and Neville Brody. Over the years, I’ve realised that the disintegration of communication interests me far more that graphic design.

As much as I love letters, I am increasingly drawn to William Burroughs’s idea of language being a ‘virus from outer space’. We struggle with language. It’s inherently limited and limiting. For example, if I say I am something, the implication is that I am only that, and also that I am permanently that. Today’s world is more fluid. On X (Twitter) the other day, someone stated that ‘text is a bad medium’ for some types of communication. That made me smile.

We also live in the age of ‘fake news’, where language is increasingly misused to spread powerful lies—always read between the lines folks. So, I followed a line from Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns to Cy Twombly and Cecil Touchon and came to unreadable text.

My work explores the tension between the fluidity of language and the rigidity of written text. As my practice has evolved, it has moved toward more conceptual forms of text art, where language is often obscured, fragmented, or entirely unreadable. I’m interested in how meaning breaks down when text becomes visual rather than verbal, and what’s left when reading is no longer the primary mode of engagement.

Influenced by text art, asemic writing, redaction and graffiti, I deconstruct the traditional calligraphic and typographic systems I was trained in. Text becomes material—something to be layered, erased, or abstracted—probing the shifting role of the reader, who is no longer a decoder of language, but a participant in its reinterpretation.

Since 2011, I have worked as a street artist/fine artist and exhibited regularly but I would like my new digital work to sit separately, hence the anonymity and a new name. This is for two reasons. Firstly, my physical art is different. It looks different and it carries a different message. Yes, there are connexions, but these will remain personal to me for now. Secondly, I am entranced by the web3 space and my digital work is often directly influenced by the empowering and democratic nature of the decentralised space—and the anonymity afforded by it.

I am delighted to have been a part of the Flannel Collective and was in the sixth cohort of the influential Vertical Crypto Art Residency in 2023.

@altgnon 
2025