Point Blank 2016

Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley’s Point Blank 2016 is partially inspired by the 1967 noir film of the same name directed by John Boorman. The term ‘point blank’ speaks to the violence of guns fired at close range, leading Burchill and McCamley’s stylised lines around the letters to read as billowing smoke. The phrase originally stems from sixteenth-century central Europe and the practice of shooting arrows at the ‘blank’ (white) centre of a target. Burchill and McCamley’s composition, however, emphasises a more philosophical dimension: they position the artwork as a set of self-negating words – ‘point’ and ‘blank’ – that empties itself of content.