‘Museaum Caelum’
(Vault of Heaven)

 

“All that could be seen of the world from my bed was the colourless patch of sky framed in the window”    

 

In his book ‘The Rings of Saturn, ’ W G Sebald observes that as a physician, Thomas Browne “Understood mortality better than the flowering of life” .  As he lay in a Norwich Hospital bed in a state of almost total immobility and faced with his own mortality, Sebald’s mind doubtless turned to similar melancholy thoughts. 

 

Many of us are familiar with the soulless refuge of a hospital bed, the window our only connection to the outside world and everyday life. We yearn for the simple pleasures beyond our reach on the outside; home, fresh air, the warmth of the sun, a blue or infinity starry sky.

 

The view from Sebald’s hospital window in a twilight hour, the treasures contained in Browne’s ‘Sealed Museum’, human frailty, thoughts of mortality and their connection to the realm of the heavens, are the thinking behind the following work made in two parts:

 

Part 1.  

 ‘The Vault of Heaven’ – etching with aquatint

“Not even those who have found a place amidst the heavenly constellations have perpetuated their name”’ 

 

A copperplate etching (approx. 50 x 50cm) after Albrecht Durer’s wood engraving ‘Imagines coeli Septentrionales et Meridionales zodiaci’ (featuring Manilius, Ptolemy and the Arab al-Sufi at the Four Corners of the Map of the Northern Sky). http://www.atlascoelestis.com/durer.htm

 

The work will be printed onto handmade Japanese tissue mounted between two pieces of Perspex and edged within a reclaimed window frame, as if one were looking through it at the sky. In addition to the historical astrological imagery, the Quincuncially ordered composition will depict various visual references taken from the texts of Thomas Browne, W G Sebald and where possible, some of the mythical creatures present within St Margaret’s Church, Cley. At the etchings’ four corners, the four figures will be replaced by those of W G Sebald, Thomas Browne and the two artists, each shown holding items from the sister work described below in Part 2. 

 

 

Part 2.  

‘Museaum Caelum’ (Vault of Heaven) – stone or slate box with Perspex lid and multiple objects

 

A square stone or slate box with perspex lid housing various ‘probable and preposterous’ items e.g. 

a meteorite particle, a bottled cloud, an angels’ wing feather, the musick of the spheres, bottled blue skies from around the world, the buckle from the girdle of Orion etc

 

The objects will relate to Part 1 of this work and be arranged in Quincuncial order. It will be suitably sealed and constructed for an outside space. 

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Jules Allen & Phyllis Williams  

Cley Contemporary 2018