For this newly-commissioned work sculptor Susie MacMurray suspends thousands of musical manuscripts from the ceiling of Fabrica to create a fragile landscape that resonates with the history of the building.
The manuscripts have been assembled from a variety of sources – hymns that might have been sung at Holy Trinity when it was a church, other religious, choral and chamber works but also jazz and more recent popular music – all in different ways emphasising music as an ephemeral, shared and emotional experience.
Susie MacMurray is a classical musician turned visual artist. Her work encompasses drawing and sculpture and ranges in scale from the small and intimate to the architectural. Her engagement with materials and with the body is at the heart of her practice. She has completed several site-specific installations that have sought to immerse or overwhelm the viewer and describes these works as producing ‘a physical experience akin to the sensation a musician feels playing at the centre of an orchestra.’
‘One way to imagine music is as a complex intertwining landscape of sounds textures, volumes and rhythms. I am thinking about how the light in the space – itself a transient, moving and ever-changing thing – could help to describe an alternative musical landscape.’
On Thursday 18 July 6-7.30pm Susie MacMurray will discuss her past work and artistic approach with Professor Catherine Harper, Dean of the School of Arts and the Digital Industries of the University of East London, and UK editor of Textile: the Journal of Cloth and Culture.
Much of the sheet music purchased to create Resonance came from the Music Corner. They are selling secondhand sheet music and instruments to raise money to build a school in India. If you need either of those things please check them out and support their cause.
Resonance is part of Time and Place, a collaborative project with organisations in the UK and France funded by the Interreg Iva Channel programme. For more information on the project and the partners visit timeandplaceproject.org
Opening times
Wednesday-Saturday 12-5pm
Thursdays in August till 7pm
Sundays and August Bank Holiday 2-5pm