Texta Texens
Details
Artist(s): Lawty, Sue (1954-)(Artist); Jones, Dan(Sculptor); Mort, Helen(Poet)
Title: Texta Texens
Date created: 2016
Accession number: LEEUA 2017.002
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/658229
Collection group(s): University Art Collection | Public art
Description
Commissioned to celebrate the ‘Yorkshire Year of the Textile’ on campus in 2016, Sue Lawty’s Texta Texens is located in the walkway outside the Clotherworkers’ South Building. It develops a dialogue with Mitzi Cunliffe’s Man-Made Fibres on the building’s façade above.
Lawty works across disciplines and materials, including stone and woven structures. She was Artist in Residence at the V&A Museum from 2005 until 2006 and Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the School of Earth & Environment, University of Leeds between 2014 and 2015. Lawty worked with poet Helen Mort, Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at the University of Leeds (2014-16) and with Yorkshire sculptor Dan Jones to create Texta Texens.
Mort’s poem ‘Texere’ is engraved in the sculpture. The words 'text' and 'textile' have a shared origin in the Latin verb ‘texere’, which means to weave, or to fabricate. The words literally become part of the weft and weave of the stonework. Exploring the link between text and textiles, the piece weaves together conversations about life and learning, research and education, people and place. As Lawty explained of her work: ‘I seek an understated restraint, balance, tension, rhythm: an essential stillness.’
Accession details
Accession number: LEEUA 2017.002
Credit: Commission, 2017
Source: Commission; University of Leeds (Leeds)
