- Venue
- St Andrews Museum
- Location
- Scotland
Immediately as one enters the gallery at St. Andrews Museum one sees on the opposite wall watercolour illustrations of traditional pot shapes in terracotta and black. Cecile Johnson Soliz’s work continues as 3 white anonymous but classically shaped vases on a wooden shelf high above the viewer’s eye level. These undecorated objects and illustrations refer the viewer to the social history of the materials and processes involved. The final object, the pot, whether hand-made or manufactured, leaves its creator and has an independent existence. This dichotomy of our relationship with the object and its creator is very apparent in Cecile Johnson’s work.
Anne Gibbs’ “Correspondence” 2011 is a table-top installation of miniature objects flowing from pencil-like columns in white or charcoal grey matt ceramic with a smoky squiggle and milky blots through symbolic thoughts, words, ideas pinned down like butterfly specimens to a landscape of turquoise and deepest green trees. The use of mixed media in conjunction with ceramics has become more common over the years and allows the artist to create forms which would be impossible in clay alone. Here the tools, the captured messages and their flourishing as a descriptive, tranquil and even poetic finale encapsulates what correspondence is.
Laura Ford’s work was the catalyst that inspired Lowri Davies and Dawn Youll to choose and curate the work in Placement. Her “In Remembrance” 1998 is in the Staffordshire figure tradition. However this reverential donkey is clad in green coat and trousers, a disturbing note, and while it fulfils Ford’s exploration of fantasy and reality, note the 3 hind legs, its air of pantomime horse prevails. Instead of solemnity it causes humour.
Nick Evans’ Violent Femme White and Violent Femme Blue are two large phalluses with alternating ridged and textured surfaces. Violent Femme Blue in particular is deeply honey-combed in its two textural areas and this enhances the purple slate colour. However, while Evans’ intentions were to display the aggressive masculinity of the phallus while reminding us that these columns are also vessels and ergo feminine too, the result has lost the shock element. Perhaps in the 21st Century we are too blasé about sex but I found these forms more amusing than menacing.
By comparison Ken Eastman’s organic sculptural forms have a timeless quality. Slabs of clay, pressed on the ground to pick up the earth’s impressions , have been built into three pleated and curved vessels. “From Here” and the smaller “Tollund” are both matt and dark grey. The gently textured surfaces have tiny glimpses of the natural clay colour on some of the edges. The lack of smoothing and fettling one expects in ceramics increase the organic effect. “Croft” has the natural clay colour exposed on the inside; its outside matt white except for one indented curve which has no colouring. These are clever pieces, interesting in construction and textured in decoration.
Connor Wilson’s work has many facets. It is nostalgic in both form and decoration but not in sentiment. “Triple Footed Vessel I”, a cylindrical form, has many references in the decoration;- Chinese warrior, monkey, Sage, looking back to our Eighteenth Century love of Chinoiserie, juxtaposed against very British antique furniture styles and Klimt-like decoration.
This is a treasured object, broken but fixed, a reminder of how precious objects can be to us.
“Triple Chambered Vessel II” is an amalgam of three bottle shaped vessels growing out of three orange spheres perched on assorted found object legs, adorned by plastic trees and a spillage of molten lead. Again the decoration is nostalgic. It is like a curio one might find tucked away amongst “bygones”, loved pieces assembled to make a personal narrative.
The final piece, “Untitled”, is a bell dome shape like a Victorian glass dome for stuffed birds. It is a cage for nostalgia. The pictorial references are to exotic creatures and precious objects. These are thought-provoking pieces, playing with memory, acquisitiveness and the emotions around ownership.
Dawn Youll’s “Spotlit” is a very personal statement. An amorphous deep blue form rests upon a yellow traffic cone. Youll regards her work as table-top landscapes but this is a small scale structure, a detail from an urban setting. I find this a much more complex piece. The clinical cone counter-balances the blue mass but they are not natural partners. Much of Youll’s work is highly symbolic and expresses a very personal world. While it challenges the viewer’s pre-conceptions it is also narrative as it has references to journeys and arrivals.
Lowri Davies’ work mixes the aesthetic and the utilitarian. Two dishes, a green teapot, cup and saucer, cream jug and sugar bowl are domestic. Davies works in bone china so these are “best” pieces. Green and gently patterned inside the forms have delicate details of household items on the outside. The jug bears a jug with a landscape. Everywhere Davies uses the context of the Welsh landscape. There is a loving nostalgia about these pieces. With these attractive but also utilitarian items are four vessels with slanting profiles that have delicate watercolour scenes. These are beautiful tributes to a loved landscape. The decoration, with touches of lustre at the rim, reminiscent of heavy clouds gathering on a summer’s day, compliment the forms. Where the symbols of jug on jug, cup on cup, on the functional items are amusing and clever, the landscape vessels are aptly titled “Roots” for there is a sense of reverence for the mountain scenery in Davies handling of her materials.
Modern ceramics are experimental and as Placement shows there is a wide variation in approach. Whether working with the monumental possibilities of earthen or stoneware, incorporating found objects, using mixed media or the ethereal qualities of porcelain, all are united by their basic material. Utility and aesthetic qualities are no longer the boundaries they once were. The potter may use form and surface decoration to express very personal ideas and ideologies. We may not be used to experiencing social comment, narrative or emotion expressed in the familiar medium of clay but for the artists this is a very liberating moment, well represented in this exhibition.
