Showing posts with label Ceramics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ceramics. Show all posts

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain 2


I've got three posts
(here and here) about the exhibition Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain which I had in 2007 at Kudos Gallery. I thought it'd be better to spread them out rather than have them all in one post. All three posts are starting with these four shots of the overall exhibition:





I had these five hair boxes at the front entrance, in lieu of the title of the exhibition.



Here is a series of light globe sculptures. The hanging works are Comfortably Numb. The work on the right is Visions of the Apocalypse. The piece in front is Life Be In It, and the one at the back is Untitled (Life Be In It II).





Three grid works - top left is Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain, on the right is Walking Among the Fires of Hell, Delighted With the Enjoyments of Genius, Which to Angels Look Like Torment and Insanity, and bottom left is The Stepford Wives.

Wire doll works - from left to right, Fall of the Rebel Angels, The Part That Wants Beauty to Suffer (a title I've used for another work in the past - and this work, when it was covered in chicken skin, was known as The Man Who Eats Meat Cannot Sneer at the Butcher), and Weltschmerz.





Some small sculptural works: The drawing pin cup is Tea and Sympathy, the shoe is Happily Ever After, and the ceramic eggs are Population Explosion.






This floor work is made from burnt light tubes. It's called the Dan Flavin I'd Like To See.


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Ceramic Experiments

This post is featuring a number, well, most of the ceramics I've made. I had a brief but productive spurt about 7 years ago. I was mainly interested in experimenting with different textures and finishes, rather than the shapes. I made mainly bowls, a few tea cups, and some non-functional broken egg-shaped pieces.

With the first couple of pieces I was inspired by Lucy Rie's work, especially the pitted surfaces she produced.


I went a bit overboard with the use of copper in the following pieces. I used copper wire and pieces of copper which melted and produced the green tinge in the glaze, but also left the grey metallic flows on the 2nd and 4th pieces.



I was also inspired by Japanese ceramics, particularly bowls for the tea ceremony. These were my attempts to make something comparable.

This piece was an experiment with some existing sculptural work. It was a hair-filled wire cage which I soaked in porcelain slip. The steel wire remained intact (but weak and fragile) and the porcelain created a thin shell (subsequently covered in a white glaze). I also did the same with a small hair doll, but that one broke during one firing. The main reason I've never continued with ceramics is the delays caused by waiting for the work to be fired, and the lack of control (since I don't have my own kiln).


These are the broken eggshell works which I posted awhile back. These were mostly pit fired. I was experimenting with different textures and colours, adding pigments, salts, bits of metal, etc. I was trying to emulate natural textures like rocks that had been worn and weathered by natural processes. These are the only ceramic works I've exhibited, in my solo show Hate and Fear and Envy and Darkness and Pain. The collective title is Population Explosion, with the idea that these are eggs that have hatched some creature.




Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Extant sculpture

This post features some sculptural works that I haven't had reason to destroy, and which I wanted to show to my friend Drew, so I thought it may as well serve as a new entry. Perhaps my next post will be sculptural works that have been destroyed.

First up are some more of the chopstick sculptures that I featured a couple of posts back. The series as a whole is called Everything Ends and was part of my Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain exhibition. It was meant to evoke the idea of impermanence, and suggest architectural ruins. I also make connections with the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi.

The first two are 50x50x20cm, and the next three are 21x21x21cm (approximately).



The following wire figures are from a series that has stretched over about 6 or 7 years. I first made 12 for an undergraduate class, then continued to make more and more! A number have sold over the years, and I rearrange them to make different installations for exhibitions. The works have had different names over the years, too, depending on the installation. A lot of them have to do with violence and genocide (one outing was called If You Want to Die in Bed, Don't Care too Much for Country, which was from a line in a song from Miss Saigon of all places). The installation below was called Fall of the Rebel Angels, if I remember correctly.

The first image is the figure just made of wire. I have a small number of these, but most of them have been stuffed with human hair. I made a lot of work in this manner in the late 90s. The main idea was that of humanity being crammed together and shaped by society's cages. Their were also many grid pieces that emphasised the rigidity and regularity of society - a society of Stepford Wives (I made two works with that title - I'll get around to posting them one day!).




This is one of my favourite sculptures. I entered it in the Waverley Art Prize (scroll down for my recent adventures with the WAP if you haven't already) about 5 years ago, and it won the People's Choice Award. I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that the plinth it was on was about a metre away from the table where people filled out their forms! They couldn't remember any of the other works they liked from the exhibition, but hey, that tea cup looks interesting!


It's a real cup, saucer and spoon, covered in thumb tacks/drawing pins which I let rust, then covered with polyester resin. I also have a shoe which I also like (see the Art2Muse page of my work for that image - I didn't have one handy). The shoe was originally a paired sculpture - one a before, and the other an after - based on the Cinderella story (the before has been destroyed. It was meant to be shiny and gold and pristine - with the 'after' being rusted and decayed - but it started to get a number of green patches, presumably from copper in the pins? It had to go!). The tea cup is called Tea and Sympathy, and you're likely to get neither!

The following work (two views) was made for another Erotica/Sex/Pornography show at Kudos Gallery. I think it was Kox and Kuntz. I can't remember the title of this work. I really should do some research before I post! It's an acrylic box with square photographs of penises. A pair of white cotton gloves was provided for people to browse through the images.


These are all ceramic eggshells. I made molds of eggs and shaped the clay, then just experimented with different treatments/pigments/effects. I like a lot of the results, but ceramics is such a bothersome art practice because of the time involved, and the lack of control of the kiln timing (not having my own kiln). This series is called Population Explosion. I used the same title a number of years before for a different work, one with Chico babies all over it. I often recycle work and titles - some are just too good to let go!


This work is called Crowd. I don't think I've ever exhibited it. I found these tiny glass bottles in a store in Melbourne. They're all stuffed with human hair. It's another work dealing with individuality/collectivity. The bottles are 5cm high.