“A photograph could also be described as a quotation, which makes a book of photographs like a book of quotations.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography.

The work of Ceal Floyer highlights the nuances in our use of the English language and our preconceptions about the relationship between title and object, often by taking a common phrase as its starting point. Her clarity of thought resonates strongly through the concise presentation of her ideas. The deceptive simplicity of the work is informed by her dry sense of humour and awareness of the absurd. Her use of the double-take principle to shift our point of view instantly forces the viewer to renegotiate his or her perception of the world.

Half Empty (1999) and Half Full (1999) are two independent photographic works that are overtly related. In fact, on first glance the two works appear identical: each colour print shows a generic pint glass containing an amount of water that seems to occupy approximately half of its volume. As is typical of Floyer’s methodology, the form is suggested by the title and the picture only becomes truly real through language. As the two works are never to be shown side by side, it is impossible to compare them, a point choreographed by the artist, who stipulates their separation as a means of enjoying a singular experience when approaching each work and it’s opposite.

Paramount to the work is the artist’s guarantee that each print has been made from a different negative and so is photographically unique. It is this similarity of image that highlights our innate need to compare and contrast, to find reason within a thought process or logic system. Yet it would be impossible for the viewer to distinguish between them, or rather to say which was Half Full, and which was Half Empty. Our appreciation of the two works depends on how we look at them. The relationship between them suggests that two things which appear identical can have very different, or, in this case, opposite meanings.

It is the double-take reaction that encourages the viewer to re-examine his or her understanding of the everyday. The expression Is your glass half full or half empty? is used rhetorically, as a linguistic litmus test to determine whether an individual is an optimist or a pessimist. It is a way of defining the status quo in life and the viewer’s position in reference to it. Often it is the most light-hearted, flippant phrase that can become the most profound.

These works have a visual relationship with An Oak Tree (1973) by Michael Craig-Martin, which has become an important piece of British conceptualism. The work consists of a glass shelf, supported high upon a wall by two chrome brackets. Upon the shelf sits a glass tumbler, which contains some water. An accompanying text contains a fake interrogation of the artist, in which the artist declares the glass of water on a shelf to be an oak tree. As well as the purely visual similarity, this piece like Floyer’s questions our conceptions of the relationship between title and object, of the power of the artist and of the transformative power of art.

For Frieze Projects 2008, Floyer will be working with a ubiquitous irritation of social life: the wobbly table. For the duration of the event, folded beer mats will be placed under all four legs of tables to turn the notion of steadying on its head and create a new situation of co-dependence between all the legs.

Using everyday or readymade objects, Floyer explores the dialectical tension between the literal and the mundane through an imaginative reconstruction of the recognition of meaning. In doing so, she occupies the space between emptiness and language, the empty half of the glass…