Anne Vibeke Mou: Window for St John’s, Healey
Title: Window for St John’s, Healey
Artist: Anne Vibeke Mou (b. 1978, Danish)
Location: St John’s Church Healey (C of E)
Date: 2010
This work was joint winner, along with James Hugonin’s window for the same church, of the 2011 ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context.
St John’s, a nineteenth-century parish church in Healey, Northumberland, has a history of fine and unusual stained glass: of its fan-shaped rose window the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner said that it ‘must be seen to be believed’, and it contains a series of windows depicting scenes from the life of St Cuthbert in a modernist style, by a Northumbrian artist, Leonard Evetts. In 2008 two new windows were commissioned of the contemporary artists Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin, both abstract, as objects of contemplation.
Mou’s window is monochrome, yet highly detailed. Thousands of tiny marks in the surface of the glass, made over several months through a process of stippling by hand with a tungsten stylus, form the image of billowing clouds. Changes in light and the position of the viewer affect the density and texture of the clouds. In the words of the artist, it ‘hovers between being and non-being.’ The process of making was intuitive, an interaction between the artist and the material. The window does not demand comprehension, inviting rather an attentive stillness.
‘In St John’s Church, Healey, Northumberland, the Healey Windows by Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin – very different in conception – form one commission in this remote village church. They are a memorial to two parishioners… The brief asked for windows which would contrast with the narrative style of earlier glass in the church. The artists were to achieve “meditative power, poise and stillness”. … We found a depth of texture to both the new windows which would draw people in and be a real challenge for visitors and pilgrims.’ (The Very Revd Nicholas Frayling, Chair of the judging panel for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context, 2011)
Anne Vibeke Mou (b. 1978) is a Danish-born artist who studied at Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She now lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne and Cumbria. Her work in glass has been exhibited in many museums and galleries, such as Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), National Glass Centre, Sunderland, and Camden Art Centre, London. Her work is in the collection of the V&A and she was commissioned to make a window for the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall, Coxwold, York. She is now undertaking doctoral research at Durham University’s Department of Geography and Centre for Visual Arts and Culture in collaboration with National Glass Centre and Sunderland University.
Further Information
Medium: Point engraving on glass
Size: 127 x 36.5 cm
Permanent display
See Anne Vibeke Mou’s window on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: James Warde-Aldam
Other works of modern and contemporary art in St John’s, Healey: windows (1955), Leonard Evetts; Contrary Rhythm (2010), James Hugonin.