Ceramics

Ken Ferguson (1928-2004) was a ceramicist best known for creating vessels with animal or anthropomorphic qualities included in the form. ‘Triple Udder Mermaid Vessel’ hybridises several figural and animal quantities into the body of a pouring jug, the inflated stature of the feet shaped to reflect breasts or udders and combining with the mermaid handle as a symbol for mythic or folk-like femininity. The vase is covered with a verdigris and gray dead-matte volcanic glaze that adds solidity and a sense of rough, earthy tactility.

Novak’s “disfigurines” reposition the historical context that ceramic classically retains — investing in a traditional western, bourgeois perspective and then subverting it to introduce a fresh and often haunting model. ‘True Love’ finds sentimentality at a difficult axis, the central form stripped of any notion of decoration or presentation for a simple, rough block of clay — the peeking rodent implying a gutter or trench cutting through. Two figures, male and female, stand split by the gulf; separated but in tune.

Lucero is as renowned for his painterly abstractions and surrealism as his ceramics, and ‘Tureen Headed Dog Pair's' striking appearance finds itself in the shock of colour applied in underglaze and sgraffito as a skin. Lucero’s common interest in colliding elements of pop & surrealist art lends an air of plasticky unreality to the piece, the childish appeal of the elf and its kitschy, “yarn-covered”  Lambie-esque finish looks as though popped fresh out of a cartoon — the rounded, bulbous ceramic form impressive for resting such a large squat head on a slight body. His practice with clay has been cited as fine art reflected at a larger and more fluid scale, incorporating and evoking archaeology, home crafts and overlooked portions of folk art or popular culture.

Lucero is as renowned for his painterly abstractions and surrealism as his ceramics, and ‘Tureen Headed Dog Pair's' striking appearance finds itself in the shock of colour applied in underglaze and sgraffito as a skin. Lucero’s common interest in colliding elements of pop & surrealist art lends an air of plasticky unreality to the piece, the childish appeal of the elf and its kitschy, “yarn-covered”  Lambie-esque finish looks as though popped fresh out of a cartoon — the rounded, bulbous ceramic form impressive for resting such a large squat head on a slight body. His practice with clay has been cited as fine art reflected at a larger and more fluid scale, incorporating and evoking archaeology, home crafts and overlooked portions of folk art or popular culture.

Peter VandenBerge was also part of the legendary group at University of California, Davis, during the 1960s. Working under Robert Arneson he was part of the Funk Art movement and has a long and successful career as a teacher: first at California State University, San Francisco and then for nearly 30 years at his alma mater, California State University, Sacramento where he is presently Professor Emeritus having fully retired in 2003

Vijay V Parker’s trompe l’oeil ceramics target the utile, observing and recreating that which might otherwise subjectively vanish into the background. Here the artist’s studio staple is multiplied and perfectly realised in clay, cans of turpentine the token of the sculptors day to day environment.

Corregan twists functionality and expectation to play with the viewers sense of perception, “Two Heads” provides the annex for disorientating and knotty emotive frequencies and symbolism, its pared down sculptural form effectively opening up the chance for differing interpretations — two silhouettes connected and paradoxically reversed. The chalky, charcoal-like material surface is created by a process of smoking the raku clay after firing — the talc content providing a rich and metallic tonality which heightens and augments the applied colour & glaze.

Alzamora’s figurative distortions search restlessly for a poetic function that conveys movement, thought and form pragmatically. ‘Ultima Thule’ connotes a passage of time as a physical object — a body warped and stretched symmetrically and seeming to occupy and move between two spaces. Multiple consciousness are captured in taffy-like fluidity. The artist's talent for material developed with his practice at the Polich Tallix foundry in New York, and here the use of porcelain  and a creamy, glossy glaze gives the work a nondescript surface and a full, resolved form.

Gallo’s finds humour in imaginary situation, combining human and animal in psychologically curious hybrid that intends to perfectly evoke the predisposition and personality of a character. The portion of animal perversely conveys a heightened sense of anthropomorphic lyricism, so frequently deployed as placeholder for an emotive quality that they become the actual embodiment. Exquisitely sculpted from ceramic and hand-painted & glazed to a representational finish, ’Under The Skin’s flappy, armoured lizard scales morph into a whorl of tattoos, the artist lending the torso’s skin an impressively leathery articulation.

Yang Jiechang is heavily influenced by the teachings of Taoism. His work emphasizes the unity of opposites, or Yin and Yang- a core principle of this belief system. “Underground Flowers”, Jiechang’s collection of porcelain bone fragments decorated in traditional Chinese floral patterns juxtaposes motifs representing life and death. This piece is one of a much larger series of floral bone sculptures.

Lambe grapples with notions of interior and exterior force in ‘Undulating Void’, the ceramic body simultaneously projecting a positive form and the suggestion of negative space. This interplay develops from the artists research into biological, oceanographic and astronomic matters; directing towards a tautology of form heralded in those natural designs, and relationships between land and sea.

Reflecting the co-existence of chaos and beauty in nature, Zemer Peled’s form remarks on a sense of place and movement that feels simultaneously delicate and violent. Each shard is made by rolling out large sheets of clay which are glazed, fired — then smashed with a hammer to create fragments holding a vestige of material fragility and edged with a new razor-sharp sense of that point of destruction, and the hint of further menace that the barbs of a land or sea creature might imply.

Shigematsu’s biomorphic ceramics explore loose naturalistic confines and a slow parabolic conversation with female sexuality; reoccurring themes from the second wave of post-war Japanese ceramicists. Base shapes are revealed through a semi-conscious working, coiling and pinching of the clay, and the soft amorphous gradients are added through layers of polished clay slip rather than a traditional glaze. This untitled piece suggests a soft movement — two dorsal territories colliding and absorbing one another, whilst a central void adds depth and dynamic presence.

The result of studies into the dynamics of sense of movement conveyed in single, resolved forms — this untitled piece conveys fluidity in a remarkable use of porcelain. Appearing soft and foamlike, Lund intends the shape to shift in proximity, appearing spontaneously or meticulously arranged as the viewers focus switches. Her continued use of ceramic comments on the material’s fragility and ubiquity, and the potential it holds for creating something unexpected.

Larocque seeks to blur and break the boundaries of humanity so as to allow in an increased psychological density to his subjects. The physicality of the sculpture and the textural dynamics held within the clay seem injected with a charged energy, seeped in a non-representational and non-canonical myth or symbolism that remains open-ended but surprisingly mystical.

Through sculpture, Shida Kuo seeks to understand material subjectivity in forms of representation, and the differing levels of reaction from particular elements or symbols when resubmitted or detached from their original contexts. This untitled piece comes from a figurative lineage — the form of a root or branch cast in low-fire clay and given naturalistic tonality through the use of oxides — but its strange detachment and stylised appearance steers away from simple depiction and suggests an unanswered narrative or emblematic presence.

Fired Clay and pigment