ceramic sculpture | Musing About Mud

monday morning eye candy: Bente Skjottgaard

by Carole Epp | Feb 24, 2014 | call for entry, emerging artist, job posting, monday morning eye candy, movie day, residency opportunity, show us your influences, technical tuesday

www.skjoettgaard.dk

emerging artist: Mayumi Yamashita

by Carole Epp | Feb 23, 2014 | call for entry, emerging artist, job posting, monday morning eye candy, movie day, residency opportunity, show us your influences, technical tuesday

Artist Statement:
People make us happy but also angry and disappointed. People are curious but also foolish. We never seem to learn, despite knowing deep down that we’ve taken others for granted and knowing that we shouldn’t have.

Mayumi’s work deals with our emotions, relationships and everyday-life and incidents with a twist and a hint of humour. Why doesn’t humanity learn from mistakes of the past? Why is it that we create things of beauty but we also destroy them? Why is humanity so “wonderful”? She plays with these questions and creates ceramic sculpture inspired by what we do, what we are and how we live.

She aims to create a fusion between man-made and natural forms and objects in her interpretation of humanity. By adding tiny human figures to these forms, Mayumi’s work offers a unique perspective on humanity:

‘Without the small figures, my work might be just an object but as soon as I put teeny tiny people onto the piece, it starts to tell a story itself. I enjoy playing with it and have been fascinated with how the tiny thing affects whole piece.’

Mayumi’s work is narrative but doesn’t always tell the whole story allowing the audience to project their emotions and ideas into the work and to interpret them in their own way.

‘I’m not trying to shake people’s shoulders and tell them that we should appreciate each other more. My work is nothing like as “noble” as that. I just want to see how the audience interacts with my pieces and how they make up their own stories and how they often seem to giggle. That’s all I want.’

www.mayumi-yamashita.com

movie day: Forms In Succession #5

by Carole Epp | Feb 12, 2014 | call for entry, emerging artist, job posting, monday morning eye candy, movie day, residency opportunity, show us your influences, technical tuesday

Porcelain sculpture by Shigekazu Nagae, ‘Forms in Succession #5’, 2011, Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This
beautiful porcelain sculpture, Forms in Succession #5 created by
Japanese potter Shigekazu Nagae dances beautifully in this video. The
paper look-alike form somehow evokes the aesthetics of origami, Japanese
paper folding. Made by using slip-cast techniques, the porcelain speaks
of its origin yet shyly introduces itself to international audiences.

This
piece was recently acquired by the Powerhouse Museum, supported by The
Ceramic Collectors Society in Australia. It was made in the pottery town
of Seto, known for centuries as the cradle of Japanese utilitarian
ceramics. The family of the artist Shigekazu Nagae (born in 1953)
produced thousands of cheap slip-cast porcelain bowls and plates. As a
youth, this made the artist feel inferior to individual potters who
hand-crafted their ceramics. After graduating from the Seto Ceramics
Training Institute, Nagae saw unique artistic possibilities in
slip-casting, which he thought other techniques such as wheel turning or
hand-coiling could not achieve. He thus created his distinctive
sculptural series ‘Forms of Succession’ of which this work is an
excellent example. The Museum acquired the object as a good example of
how an innovative idea enables an artist to adapt conventional
production techniques, in this case slip-casting, to create new art
forms. In addition, the beauty of the piece would no doubt be highly
admired and enjoyed by Museum visitors.

This video suggests a
new way of museum presentation that differs from conventional methods of
display and interpretation. Museums research, collect, document,
conserve and display objects. But in this contemporary society, we are
not only able to display objects in glass showcases but also in the
digital world in a creative manner. In order to enhance understanding of
the piece, we decided to film the beauty of the object and to allow it
to speak for itself. Thanks to the photographer, Geoff Friend and film
producer Leonie Jones for sharing this small experiment!!

Min-Jung Kim, Curator, Asian Arts and Design, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney