Abstract

In this paper, translation engages not only with metaphors, but the ‘consistent multiplicity’ (Alliez & Feher 1986: 41) of figures of speech that intersemiotically animate Australian artist Brett Whiteley’s (1939-92) verbal and pictorial language. The aim is to address some ‘formative questions […] concerning language, medium and meaning’ (Harrison 2004: 5) by studying the rhetoric devices featuring in two texts: a letter written by Whiteley to his mother in 1979, and the painting Art, life and the other thing (1978). The letter and the painting intersect in a series of hypertextual links, and map language nomadism across words and images. The comparative analysis of Whiteley’s painting and letter displays that the translating process is deeply influenced and sometimes completely transformed by the concurrence of heterogeneous elements. Pictures and words relate to each other: when translation enters, the text is completed.