Summer project exploring and finding different forms of collection.
Tag: Exploration
Eve Hesse
American Abstract Impressionist sculptor, who would emigrate with her family from Nazi torn Germany as a very young girl.
When spending a year back in Germany, she had to use her ingenuity and creativity to create expressive sculptures from found material in disused German factor, where later materials such as latex, fibreglass and plastic become her characteristic elements throughout her work.
Enclosed from 7 Objects/69 1969
Repetition Nineteen III 1968
Tomorrow’s Apples (5 in White) 1965 Eva Hesse 1936-1970 Purchased 1979 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T02383
Untitled (7 poles), view in studio, fiberglass over polyethylene over aluminum wire
Untitled (Rope Piece), 1970
Her creativity and playfulness in usage of these unconventional materials fascinates me, and that’s where I would like to strive. It’s very minimal approach of exhibiting, which subtly suggest ideas behind human condition – in its sexuality and naturality distanced from conventional nature, repetition, connectivity, or failing to find satisfying amount of meaning.
I want to strive for more playful usage of other materials with ceramics, as I managed in Tea for Two, and stay within the subject of human condition and philosophy, as that is what art means for me.
Katharine Morling
Katharine is UK ceramic artist predominantly working in unglazed porcelain, creating a three dimensional drawing of everyday inanimate objects.
I admire the strip to complete simpleness in Katharine’s work, but still expressing a lively and whimsical illustrative nature, with aspects of positive nature and character of the artist.
Especially with her newer work, archive drawers, collections of found specimens from nature expressing almost childlike fascination with the world.
This work informs my exploration in line through supportive structures of cooling towers and industrial architecture in my Subject, as well as the seams of my Tea for Two textile tea-set.
The ambiguity is especially strong in this collection of peculiar objects, being life size replicas of real objects but stripped down to number of lines and a shape, making us feel uncertain of their full 3D or 2D capabilities; same as my uncertainty in stability and containment.
Alison Britton
Alison is one of the leading ceramic artists of her generation, and part of a radical group of RCA graduates in the early 1970s.
She took function and ornamentation as her subject to explore, focusing on the containing qualities – “both its formal possibilities and its capacity to hold and communicate thoughts and ideas. “
In her newer work (2012) she gives emphasis on the colour and the fluidity of slip application.
I’m interested to extend my knowledge of slips, as great colourant of surfaces, but now as a 2D form shaper through it’s fluid application.
As Alison I’m also interested in the exploration of ‘containment’ through the language of ceramic vessels.
However I want to focus more on the absent feeling of these qualities, related to human experience and our aspiration for permanent security and stability, or rather the normality of the constant search.
Steve Buck
This work reminds me of Annie Turners with just thicker more robust mesh, shaped in more vessel like forms.
However, it also explores relationship between the outer and inner forms.
Annie Turner
Annie Turner (1958) is British ceramic artist notably known for her gridded ceramic vessels/sculptures.
The hand-build stoneware structures explore the River Deben and surrounding landscape of Suffolk, closely linked to her family roots.
The sculptures reflect the rivers tidal changes and seasonal rhythms by naturally warping and changing in the extreme heats of kiln.
For me it beautifully represents the time passing relating to physical space, and the stability or rather absence of stability and absence of permanence that time and space dimension brings.
Oyster Net, 2013, Stoneware, with lithium glaze © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Oyster Net, 2013, Stoneware, with lithium glaze © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
They “echo the forms of its (the River Deben) associated man-made structures, such as sluices, ladders and nets. The surfaces of the works suggest processes of change and transformation, through erosion, decay, rusting, or accretion. The works reflect both the natural rhythms of the landscape and its fragility.”
I photographed and looked at photos of decaying and rusty industrial structures. The natural landscape of man’s security and stability through work.
I want to explore the natural landscape of humans, the feeling of stability, security and certainty.
ANNIE TURNER Martello Tower, 2004 handbuilt stoneware
Felicity Aylieff
Large scale, monumental pots with expressive surface marks while looking at traditional techniques of Chinese Porcelain from Jingdezhen.
Felicity Aylieff set up her ceramic studio in Jingdezhen, China – the world’s capital of porcelain, and ceramics.
This gave her first hand access to the knowledge of traditional ceramic making, which she is trying to translate “radically different, contemporary, with a clear personal voice” into her own practice.
In ‘Mapping Memory’ series, Felicity Aylieff is commissioning the local craftsmen to throw monumental vases from porcelain for her, on which she can create free-form brush marks, expressive lines and grids.
The marks and movement are well rehearsed from previous tests and practice to acquire “confidence, familiarity and integrity of mark.”
To create the rich dark ink blue, as well as soft and translucent, she is using Ming Blue – a mix of cobalt and iron oxides, diluted for different tones of blue.
Blue and White monumental Vase, 2011 ﾠ Porcelain, Glazed, Kang Qian Cobalt oxide 191 x 71 cms
Blue and White monumental Vase, 2011 ﾠ Glazed porcelain painted in cobalt blue 191 x 71 cms
Five Storey’s: Chinese Ladders – 3, 2009 ﾠ Glazed Porcelain, Cobalt Oxide. 269 x 50 x 50 cms
Visually, the surface marks resemble the skeletal parts of industrial cooling towers, chimneys or furnaces; just less structured, more expressive.
I tried my own version with inks, but trying for slightly more regular pattern of lines, resembling more structures on Bechers’ photographs.
However, I still tried to keep the free and expressive nature when using a brush.
And more controlled ink drawings:
Tea for Two – Plaster workshop
Working continuously for over a week in the plaster room to create plaster prototypes from my textile stitched cups and then plaster moulds for slipware.
As I wanted to explore the holding and containing abilities of a tea set, and possible absence of it, I looked at shape created by the act of accommodating.
I chose textiles and stitch as it’s another object associated with home and domestic environment. Available at my house too, I spend few late evenings cutting shapes and stitching them together to govern the final shape to some extend, to at least appear like a cup or a teapot.
Filled with plaster, even thought the textiles forms were assembled from number of parts to hold the shape, the plaster was much heavier and overpowered the stitches.
In some cases I had to hold the shape until the plaster hardened, or supported them with boards, strings or in a container.
At the end I ended up with fairly large amounts of prototypes, as the teacup moulds were open, allowing me to separate the plaster and textile without the need of ripping it, as necessary with other textile moulds. I was free to experiment with the way they stand and fold, turning them inside out, bounding them with string, etc.
Attempting for a smaller components such as spouts and handles, which are trickier.
The only worry is how much they will shrink in the kiln as a slip cast, and being able to pour.
The hardest and most time consuming part was creating the 3 plaster moulds for slip casting.
With highly irregular shape, I had to look for many undercuts and divide the shape into 4 to 8 part moulds.
However, taking every opportunity to work in the plaster room, I managed to produce the 3 fairly complicated moulds in about a week + extra day or two; getting essential skills at more detailed plaster mould making. Of course through many mistakes too.
Tea for Two – Newport Museum
A visit to the Newport Museum and Art Gallery
Display of teapots in a Newport’s charity shop. Highly ornamental and narrative, but on its bottom they state that they are for decoration purposes only.
Bark teapot, a perfect replication of nature in clay.
A political teapot of cooperation. How a tiny teapot tries to represent movements and ideas in society.
More industrial functional design.
A figurative, totem or idol teapot.
Ceramic Líška 