In the 1070s an unknown workshop embroidered the story of the Norman Conquest onto a strip of linen seventy metres long. More than nine hundred years later, Susanne Thea retold it in copper.
The Paraphrase follows the original scene by scene, from King Edward’s court to the death of Harold at Hastings. It is not a copy. Each of the ninety plates was drawn, bitten and printed by hand in the artist’s workshop. Along the way she brought in figures the medieval designers kept to the margins or left out: women, labourers, animals and the odd joke.
It was first shown at the Rundetaarn in Copenhagen in the winter of 2006, hung as a single line of prints with the artist’s handwritten commentary underneath. It has since travelled to Dublin, Houston and, in 2014, to Bayeux itself, where it hung a few streets from the tapestry it paraphrases.
Draft Placeholder copy written from public sources. The artist’s own text would go here.