The typography used in the woodcut can be traced back to a photograph of four abstract concrete trees from 1925 by the sculptors Jan and Joel Martel, from which Boyce developed a linear repeat pattern. While working with the pattern, letters began to appear and eventually an entire alphabet; some orientated correctly, others on their side or even upside down, giving the sense of letters and words tumbling through space. Boyce started to use the letters to spell out phrases which manifest themselves in different ways, thinking about how people would scratch their names onto park benches or school tables or carve words into trees.
In 2011, Boyce exhibited a sculpture titled 'Do Words Have Voices', based on the forms of a Jean Prouve library table from 1951. Using this typography he carved a series of texts into the surface of the table top. In that piece and in this woodcut print, the artist is thinking about the written word and the internal voices we create in the process of reading. The title and text come from that question - do we create voices when we read or do words speak to us? Martin Boyce produced a screenprint for the Glasgow Print Studio Habitat Portfolio in 1999. This print was made as part of the 40/40 exhibition in 2013, to mark 40 years of Glasgow Print Studio. 40 artists were each invited to make an edition of 40 prints, which was exhibited at Glasgow Print Studio from 24th August to 13th October 2013.
