Angelica Mesiti has always been interested in non-verbal communication. She trained as dancer from a young age, but changed course and went to art school, incorporating performance into her practice, looking at ways to tell a story without using a word.
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"Society has become so more and more text and word oriented," she says.
"I guess that's where a lot of my impulses have come from, thinking about the other ways we communicate and how people have historically communicated.
"As an artist words are not your tool, all my training is about expression in a different way."
An exhibition of five of her major works opens at the National Gallery of Australia on September 9, including the recent acquisition The Calling (2013-14).
The 35 minute video installation, which is in part an anthropological documentary of sorts, looks at three communities which still use an ancient whistling language.
Ms Mesiti travelled to the village of Kuskoy in Northern Turkey, the island of La Gomera in The Canary Islands and the Island of Evia in Greece and lived with the villagers, documenting how the language was used in everyday life.
"The work looks at the life cycle of the language, from it being a necessary everyday tool that helped people communicate in rural and remote villages in mountainous terrains where whistling travelled better than the human voice to how technology has contributed to its demise," she said.
"The work ends looking at a community trying to revive the language through tourism and teaching it again through the school system."
The exhibition also features the award-winning Rapture (silent anthem) (2009), Citizens band (2012), Nakh removed (2015) and The colour of saying (2015).
"The exhibition is a collection of major pieces from my practice since 2009," Ms Mesiti says.
"It traces the main themes in my work, methods of non-verbal communication, dance performance, a kind of transcendence through performance entering into receptive states."
One of Australia's most significant moving image practitioners, Ms Mesiti has exhibited widely throughout Australia, North America and Europe. This is the first museum survey of her work.
"It is an honour to be presenting my work at the NGA and incredible for The Calling to be included in its important collection," Ms Mesiti said.
"The NGA is such an important place for Australian art. I am so pleased that my works have been brought together as part of the NGA's dynamic new contemporary program."
Jaklyn Babington, senior curator of contemporary art said the exhibition provides the perfect opportunity for visitors to experience the work of the internationally significant artist.
"Throughout her career, Angelica has explored the silent and the unspoken - the elements of human interaction too basic of complex to be articulated," Ms Babington said.
