Bartha Contemporary is delighted to present Silence (Project for a Library) by British artist Susan Morris. The artist's latest work is related to a series of large-scale Jacquard tapestries that have recently been commissioned by St John's College, University of Oxford, for permanent display in their new library and study centre. The edition of 3 + 2AP will be offered both as individual works (Edition no. 1 of 3 and 1 of 2 AP) and as complete set (Edition 2, 3 of 3 and 2 of 2 AP).
A set of six Jacquard tapestries woven directly from a recording of ambient sound, taken in the garden outside a library. The sound recording is configured to the 'score' for John Cage's 1952 Lecture on Nothing, a spoken word performance that has silence at its core. The most striking feature of the work is a gradient colour that travels from left to right, beginning with a dark, inky, blue and ending with a cloudy white. The choice of the colour blue, and the way this colour passes across the set of six tapestries like a shadow, is intended to evoke the Cyanotype - proto-photographic prints made with sunlight. Stretching the tapestries emphasises the net-like structure of crossing lines that make up both the rhythmic pattern of the sound recording and the gradient colour effect, which is achieved by weaving solid lines of colour either closer or further away from one another. Another gradient is applied to the sound recording itself, with the two gradients (background and foreground) producing a horizontal movement that the eye registers as traveling in both directions. Finally, the sound peaks, which fall like rain down the tapestries, produce a a vertical movement in the opposite direction. These works are related to a series of large-scale Jacquard tapestries that have recently been commissioned by St John's College, University of Oxford, for permanent display in their new library and study centre.
Modern technology, the recording of time, and the documentation of movement come together in Susan Morris's work. By using digital tracking devices worn on the body, the artist records her daily routine or seemingly repetitive gestures to produce images that reveal a body caught up in the machinations of clock and calendrical time. At the centre of Morris's practice, explored through a range of different media, is the very traditional idea of an artist's self-portraiture serving as a commentary on subjectivity in general.
Established at the turn of the century by Niklas and Daniela von Bartha, the London-based gallery, Bartha Contemporary, places a strong emphasis on non-figurative and conceptual works by mostly established American and European contemporary artists. Hailing from the second generation of the art-dealing von Bartha family, Niklas, along with his wife Daniela, maintains a retrospective look at underappreciated modernising movements of the past in the gallery programme, whilst championing the latest works of contemporary artists.
