is there straw dressed in this field
is there straw dressed in this field
Matthew Wright
Cheap Tongue Gallery, Fremantle.
25th Oct - 2nd Nov 2025
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu was a senior Yolŋu artist from Yirrkala, North-East Arnhem Land. In 2009 she removed all figurative components in her work so that only the cross-hatching remained. Her work is often referred to in Yolŋu Matha as mayilimiriw, which translates to ‘meaningless’ or absent of customary meaning. She expressed her obsessive preoccupation with painting through the freeness of her brushstrokes, making art primarily ‘for the joy of painting’ (c/o National Gallery of Victoria)
‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ was composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well- formed, but semantically nonsensical. There is no obvious understandable meaning that can be derived from it, which demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics. Yet W.V. Quine’s take on this was that ‘the sentence is simply false, not meaningless’ (c/o Wikipedia)
The scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1900) represents the American farmer or the rural populace generally. More specifically, he is often seen as a reflection of the common person, particularly during the late 19th century when the story was written, who often faced difficulties and was seen as lacking in intelligence. The Scarecrow’s desire for a brain can be interpreted as a search for self-confidence and recognition of his own abilities. The Scarecrow, with his “terrible sense of inferiority and self-doubt,” is seen as a symbol of the American farmer, who felt marginalised and often underestimated, according to a post by the National Museum of American History (c/o Google AI)
