Sounds of Shaped Silence – exhibition

Sounds of Shaped Silence is a solo exhibition of work by final year BA Fine Art student Nathaniel Crow Mercer.

This exhibition of ceramic sculptures explores the intimate act of writing and sharing.

About Nathaniel Crow Mercer

I am a ceramic sculptor working with poetry as its own form. I consider the acts of commemorating or concealing words within or upon my sculptures, intending to show the fragile and open nature of displaying poetry to an audience. Looking towards absence as a presence in sculpture and the poetics of silence upon a blank page. 
 
My work mimics the act of writing, sometimes letting poetry exist in essence. Whether unwritten on a notebook page replica, or simply unfinished. Occasionally my words are translated into my own language or veiled within the clay to burn away in the kiln, leaving only the shell of the ephemeral existence of text behind.

Constantly inspired by my studies on the act of looking, my practice explores how artworks can be read aside from in the literal sense. Challenging a viewer to see text as an aesthetic element rather than decipherable. My sculptural practice odes to words spoken by me and unspoken by others, bringing light to the privilege of the voice I have been given. I navigate my place in the world through my sculpture, learning and unlearning where my voice belongs, it's volume and necessity.

I see Brotherton Libraries history and grand archive of information the perfect home for a quiet installation like mine. The deafening silence of the building almost acts as a pacifier for the viewer, letting them hear the silence of my sculptures.

I find working in a smaller scale allows my sculptures to sit vulnerably in a gallery space, resonating with the nature of my poems, letting my words exist physically as they would leave my mouth. I make sculptures as a way of processing my own existence, importance, and impermanence. Constantly battling with the passing of time, I see poetry as a form of documentation. Where making sculpture becomes my way of commemorating, not immortalizing. Or likewise my way of confiding and not sharing.

Venue

Brotherton Library
(first room left of the entrance)
Woodhouse Lane
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT

Image

Nathaniel Crow Mercer, A Boy and A Deer – Translated. Image courtesy of the artist.