The phrase "an overt reference to" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing something that explicitly mentions or alludes to another subject or concept.
Example: "The author made an overt reference to classical mythology in her latest novel."
Alternatives: "a clear mention of" or "an explicit allusion to".
Mr. Helvenston, who has begun referring to his yard as a "patriot garden," an overt reference to the Victory Gardens planted during World War II, got back on the line, expressing disbelief at the response by Mr. Padin and the city of Orlando: "Who doesn't like a garden?
He used that speech a number of times, honed and developed it to later include an overt reference to the breaking down of racial barriers and of all forms of discrimination".
At the September 2008 conference Miliband damaged himself with an indifferent speech, clumsy pictures of him holding a banana and then being overheard in a lift saying he had to avoid a Heseltine moment, an overt reference to his leadership ambitions.
But her imagery is both too familiar and too loaded even for schoolchildren to regard as anything other than an overt reference to the Axial Age founding of faiths.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that the T-shirts that read "Team Sander" were an overt reference to UCLA professor Richard Sander's work on affirmative action.
For Death Cab, their forthcoming LP "Kintsugi" is an overt reference to the departure of founding guitarist-producer Chris Walla, who had been with the act since its 1998 debut as a full band.
The larger worry is that certain features of an object, such as the cruelty of a joke or the fact that one is not responsible for some bad trait, do not make any overt reference to a state or attitude.
A reader familiar with Spain may wonder about the omission of any overt reference to León's Catalan origins.
This they are doing, it appears, without any reference to each other (though they are on the same bed) and without any overt reference to the viewer.
At first, their work marginally resembles advertising: the agency runs images in magazines and on billboards, unfettered by any overt reference to the client.
The category would be easily confused with the very different matter of the most religiously significant movie, which might well be one without any overt reference to religion at all.
