Monday 31 October 2011

Ceramics Biennial - continued


We are still at the Spode factory site.




Jacob Stanley






Leo Richardson






detail






Beata  Domanska






Aime Fisher





Jenna Stanton





Janna Edwards






Now we come to a huge space filled with installations.  Unfortunately, I was not able to get the names of the contributors
.






These huge curved discs were lifted by crane, then dropped and smashed
.







Installation, or remains from the days when the factory was thriving?






This, definitely an installation.





We now move to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery where the second part of the exhibition is housed






but first a look at the elegant sculpture at the front





Merete Rasmussen




Stoneware, using coiling technique





To emphasize the form she uses a matt surface in one colour





Caroline Tattersall





Andrea Walsh




Andrea Walsh




Andrea Walsh




Ken Eastman




Sum Kim




Sum Kim




Lowri Davies




Katharine Morling, to commemorate her grandfather who was an eye surgeon and an optician




James Evans




Phoebe Cummins

This is the award winner.

Cummins works without a fixed studio space, constructing directly on site from raw material. The intensive labour of making is heightened by the work's temporary existence. For this entry she used clay taken from the ground locally to construct a scene suggestive of the swamps that once covered the area, considering how this prehistoric landscape formed the law materials which later enabled the industrial revolution in Stoke-on-Trent and its ceramics industries.

Saturday 29 October 2011

Ceramics Biennial


The British Cemamics Biennial at the original Spode factory site.




a huge, cavernous space, with the ghosts of the past still present




rolls of clay





the old molds




abandoned boots and shoes




carts of seconds with the prices on




the old kilns with pots still inside





a real sense of abandonment and loss.

And in the midst of all of that, some exquisite ceramics, symbols that not everything has been lost and that the art of clay making is still very strong, albeit in a different form.





Flux - the new blue and white





The Flux Brand concept -" to develop a collection of bone china products, using 'classic' in-glaze cobald blue as the signature, decorating colour, and accented with burnished gold and platinum - reminiscent of iconic traditional Staffortshire bone china products of the Industrial Revolution".





'Classic - contemporary'





Brigitte Jurack




detail




Brigitte Jurack



Brigitte Jurack



German Camilo Esguerra (Cami Cabra)



Victoria Johnson



A close look

"The draped porcelain entices touch, an invitation to explore its flexibility and experience its cloth-like materiality.




The flowing form is intentional and has emerged from the integration of two inflexible materials. Once combined the inflexible becomes fluid, a porcelain cloth to embrace the underlying host".





Bracelet by Jessica Holt




Natasha Wood




"In my practice I challenge the perception of simple forms. By placing together objects that exist in conflicting perspective and picture planes, I create visually interesting and curious objects.




I am interested in how 3D form and volume can be implied or removed.





Altering the dimensions of the form itself can transform a familiar domestic object creating something new and exciting.




I have created a collection of trompe d'oeil studies which all depict the same object but from a different view point.




The hope is that whilst the work sits between 2D and 3D it also falls somewhere between reality and illusion".




Lawrence Epps




a closer look

"My work is inspired by office jobs and corporate culture".




Edward Baldwin.


The exhibition is so extensive that I was careful to only photograph exhibits I really liked. Even so, there is too much and even though I am going through a sifting process while doing this post, there is still an awful lot, so the rest will have to wait for another time....