SILENCE (ON PREPARED LOOM)

St John’s College, University of Oxford

Permanent installation of Jacquard tapestries woven from ambient sound recorded in the garden at St John’s College, University of Oxford. Artist’s book, with assigned shelf mark, housed in the library within which the tapestries are hung. Essays by Simon Aeberhard, Alex Bacon, Rye Dag Holmboe. Curator: Vivien Lovell, Modus Operandi.

Silence (On Prepared Loom), artist’s book, published by Bartha Contemporary, 2022. Housed in the library in which the tapestries are hung. Extract from wall plaque: Sound converted by algorithm into lines corresponding to the instructions for John Cage’s 1952 'Lecture on Nothing', a spoken word performance that has silence at its core. Book on the project located at: ART/900/MOR.

Download Inlines, 2022, essay by Rye Dag Holmboe here.

Press Release

Modern technology, the recording of time, and the documentation of movement and sound come together in Susan Morris's work.

She studied visual art at Birmingham College of Art (now UCE), Goldsmiths College and University of the Arts, London and has shown her work extensively throughout the UK and Europe in solo and group exhibitions. She has won numerous awards including those from the Wellcome Trust, the Arts Council and the British Council. Previous commissions include a tapestry series for the Nuffield Laboratory of Opthalmology, Oxford. Susan Morris lives and works in London. She is represented by Bartha Contemporary.

Contemporary Art Commissions at St John's College:

There is a long tradition of art for architecture at St John's, an early example being William Laud's invitation to Hubert Le Sueur in 1633 to create the statues of Charles 1 and Queen Henrietta Maria for the Canterbury Quadrangle. In recent decades, the architecture of the Garden and Kendrew Quadrangles designed by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard and the new Library and Study Centre by Wright & Wright has allowed artists to create site-specific works inspired by their context. This approach has been led by the vision of the College's presidents, bursarsand art panel members, and supported by its architects who have generously afforded opportunities for other creative minds. Susan Morris's woven tapestry series 'Silence (on Prepared loom)' for the new Library & Study Centre is the latest such commission, along with Mary Lum's tapestry outside the Laudian Library. 'Silence (on Prepared loom)' forms an important addition to the collection of notable contemporary artworks for the College, which include Kirsty Brook's 'Otranto Passage Artwork' and Susanna Heron's 'Stone Drawing' both of whichwere commissioned as part of the first phase of the New Library. The contemporary art collection includes earlier commissions by Wendy Ramshaw, Alexander Beleschenko, Langlands & Bell and Ian Monroe.

Commissions curated by Vivien Lovell, Modus Operandi

Extract from the college newsletter, 2022