Casting Letters: Art, Books, Chance
Open from 9am-4pm daily *, Jesus College is delighted to host this exhibition of book art and book-inspired art.
Artists’ experiments with books and letters have taken many forms, some of which look more like books than others. This exhibition of book art, and book-inspired art, opens a view of one of its most intriguing stories: the tradition of reflections, riffs, and responses to one seminal work, Stéphane Mallarmé’s A Roll of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance (Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard). Mallarmé’s experimental work celebrates its 125th anniversary in May 2022, when this exhibition opens. The particular objects on display here, and on view at the screening events, play on two central ideas inspired by this work: chance and visible language. The works in the exhibition are in effect a conversation about the intersection of those themes. What part does chance have to play in the way language is depicted on (or off) the page, and how might accidents of language determine how it looks? How does meaning settle throughout the forms of letters, words, lines, pages, and books, as well as in what the words say?
The exhibition and screenings include works by Jérémie Bennequin, Isabella Checcaglini & Mohammed Bennis, Robert Filliou, Ernest Fraenkel, Rodney Graham, ‘Estelle J.’, Michel Lorand, André Masson, Reinhold Nasshan, Michalis Pichler, Man Ray, Mitsou Ronat & Tibor Papp, and Honorine Tepfer. Works are drawn from the Books on Books Collection, an exceptional contemporary collection of artists’ books and important future gift to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
* Opening hours for the June Bank Holidays and Bank Holiday weekend will be as follows:
Thursday, 2 June: 9am-4pm
Friday, 3 June: 9am-12pm
Saturday, 4 June: 9-4pm
Sunday, 5 June: 9am-12pm
