Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs: VISPO, Altered Texts & Altered Realities
A Solo Exhibition by ReVerse Butcher (rVb)
Art Space Ballarat | 14 Lydiard Street North, Ballarat Central, VIC 3350
A Solo Exhibition by ReVerse Butcher (rVb)
Art Space Ballarat | 14 Lydiard Street North, Ballarat Central, VIC 3350
Exhibition Dates: 18 December 2025 – 25 January 2026
Opening Night: Thursday 18 December, 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Opening Night: Thursday 18 December, 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Art Space Ballarat presents “Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs: VISPO, Altered Texts & Altered Realities”, the first solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist ReVerse Butcher (rVb). Drawing on two decades of experimental practice across performance poetry, VISPO, collage, altered books, music, projection art, VR and immersive 3D environments, this exhibition showcases the evolution of rVb’s visual-poetic language from the page to the spatial realm. This exhibition coincides with the release of the companion book of the same name, published by Steel Incisors (UK) and available in both physical and digital editions.
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION
Visual Poetry (VISPO) occupies the charged territory between language and visual art. In the tradition of cut-ups, erasures, altered books, and experimental literary interventions, VISPO approaches text not as a fixed narrative container but as a material that can be dissected, rearranged, inhabited, and rebuilt. These works challenge conventional reading habits, insisting on non-linear, destabilised, multi-sensory engagement.
ReVerse Butcher’s VISPO practice—and the works in this exhibition—push this interrogation further by extending text beyond the page and into sculptural, spatial, and immersive digital environments. Coming from a background in performance poetry and experimental music, rVb has always considered poetry not only as language but as space: a site of memory, dream, resistance, and embodied experience. For rVb, meaning is never static; language are mutable structures we move through.
In “Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs: VISPO, Altered Texts & Altered Realities”, rVb reframes the book and the poem as open, contested spaces for agency, rebellion, and aesthetic intervention. These works rethink what a text is and what it can do, presenting language as layered, volatile, and alive—something that can be shattered & rebuilt, collaged into new forms, or expanded into immersive 3D structures that the viewer must explore for themselves.
Importantly, all artworks in “Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs: VISPO, Altered Texts & Altered Realities” have been created without the use of generative AI. Every piece derives from ReVerse Butcher’s long-standing practice of manual and digital experimentation, including hand-cut collage, altered texts, traditional mark-making, and sculptural processes built directly by hand and natively in virtual reality. The work reflects a deliberately human, craft-driven approach to visual poetry and hybrid media, grounded in embodied artistic decision-making rather than algorithmic image generation.
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
48 Original VISPO Artworks
The exhibition features forty-eight works from the Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs Collection, available for purchase. These VISPO works are a hybrid of traditional & digital techniques. These digital prints have been mounted on wooden panels, finished with resin, with each an edition of 1/1.
"Art / Magic", ReVerse Butcher, November 2024
"Cholera", ReVerse Butcher, March 2025
"Command Nothing", ReVerse Butcher, January 2025
Screen-Based and Immersive Works
Alongside the physical works, visitors will encounter screen-based and video artworks derived from rVb’s Virtual Sculptures—figurative digital objects created by hand in Virtual Reality, and using textures painstakingly built from her VISPO pieces. These hybrid artworks reveal how VISPO can be transformed & collaged into into spatial surfaces, and experimental moving image works.
Still from Videopoem of "To Stop Time", from "The Continuous Present", by ReVerse Butcher & Kylie Supski
3D Render of "Rebis", from "The Continuous Present", by ReVerse Butcher
3D Render of "Ouroboros", from "The Continuous Present", by ReVerse Butcher
Still from Videopoem of "No Beginning", from "The Continuous Present", by ReVerse Butcher & Kylie Supski
3D Virtual Sculptures and Digital Landscapes
Working natively in VR, rVb hand-builds sculptural poetic forms using a process she describes as “3D Collage.” Each work begins with analogue materials—hand-painted pages in watercolor, ink, and acrylic on vintage paper—before being digitized, reworked, and transformed into complex 3D textures. These surfaces retain the tactility and intention of their handmade origins while becoming reflective, refractive, and chromatic skins in virtual space.
Inside the VR headset, rVb sculpts as one might draw: gesturally, rhythmically, and with an acute sensitivity to line, texture, and emotional weight. Forms are grouped and textured layer by layer, echoing traditional collage principles where juxtaposition creates new meaning.
Figures and structures are developed through anatomical study, 3D posing tools, and attention to the narratives of symbolic gestures. The VISPO embedded throughout these sculptures emerges from her long engagement with erasure, cut-up, collage, and altered text—language rendered as fragment, glyph, and semantic residue. In this environment, text becomes anatomical architecture, topography, & atmosphere.
These virtual sculptures and digital landscapes extend her performance, musical, and literary roots into a fully spatial, future-facing virtual poetic realm. During the exhibition, rVb will also be present in the gallery on selected days, offering visitors the opportunity to watch her sculpt live in VR—witnessing the creative & technical processes that shape an artwork in real time.
"In a Dark Place", ReVerse Butcher, January 2025
Screenshot from "The Last Stanza", on Viverse. Virtual artwork pictured, feat. "In a Dark Place", ReVerse Butcher, June 2025.
Live VR Immersive Guided Tour of "The Continuous Present: Part 1: To Stop Time", at Raindance Immersive Festival, June 2025. Virtual Photograph by Nopied.
Live VR Immersive Guided Tour of "The Continuous Present: Part 1: To Stop Time", at Raindance Immersive Festival, June 2025. Virtual Photograph by Nopied.
Live VR Immersive Guided Tour of "The Continuous Present: Part 1: To Stop Time", at Raindance Immersive Festival, June 2025. Virtual Photograph by Nopied.
Artist Background
ReVerse Butcher (rVb) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans performance poetry, collage, altered books, VISPO, mixed media, videopoetry, music, and immersive VR art. Her work investigates how language constructs reality—examining the instability of meaning, the materiality of text, and the borderlands between 2D and 3D environments. Her multidimensional works intentionally bend the nature of text & space, crossing digital & traditional boundaries both technically & philosophically. She will use any medium necessary to subvert reality until it is less dull or oppressive. She currently lives & works in Ballarat, Australia.
ReVerse Butcher, 2025.
ReVerse Butcher, physical vs virtual, 2025.
Featured Publication
“Torn Textures & Hybrid Glyphs: VISPO, Altered Texts & Altered Realities”
Published by Steel Incisors (UK), this new book accompanies the exhibition and charts the evolution of rVb’s VISPO, textual experiments, and spatial-poetic methodologies. It is available as both a printed book and an eBook, and can be ordered directly through the publisher.
https://www.steelincisors.com/
Published by Steel Incisors (UK), this new book accompanies the exhibition and charts the evolution of rVb’s VISPO, textual experiments, and spatial-poetic methodologies. It is available as both a printed book and an eBook, and can be ordered directly through the publisher.
https://www.steelincisors.com/
Artwork Sales & Availability
All forty-eight VISPO artworks in the exhibition are available for purchase at the gallery. Select digital works, video pieces, and extended media experiences can be accessed via in-gallery, or online via QR codes.
VENUE DETAILS
Art Space Ballarat
14 Lydiard Street North
Ballarat Central, VIC 3350
Gallery open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–4pm.
14 Lydiard Street North
Ballarat Central, VIC 3350
Gallery open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–4pm.
