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
by Carole Epp | Feb 5, 2014 | call for entry, emerging artist, job posting, monday morning eye candy, movie day, residency opportunity, show us your influences, technical tuesday
“Moiré” from Jack Tompkins on Vimeo.
Client → Sam Brennan [3D Designer]
Turnaround → 4 weeks
Project Summary → Moiré is an enquiry into material and process.
My interest lies in where craft processes lie in contemporary design.
In this project I have subverted one of the oldest crafts in existence,
the coiling of clay, by automating the process using an extruding
machine. Once fired this uniform layered construct of ceramic produces
startling results, the ceramic actually behaves like a spring.
The dip dying process is again another process not usually associated
with ceramics, however I found that the porosity of the work lended
itself to absorbing colour. The piece is of no practical function but
demonstrates how, once put under different conditions, we can still
cause a material to behave completely unexpectedly.
Creative Direction → Sam Brennan
Cinematography → Jack Tompkins
by Carole Epp | Jan 29, 2014 | call for entry, emerging artist, job posting, monday morning eye candy, movie day, residency opportunity, show us your influences, technical tuesday
Luke Syson was a curator of Renaissance art, of transcendent paintings of saints and solemn Italian ladies — serious
art. And then he changed jobs, and inherited the Met’s collection of
ceramics — pretty, frilly, “useless” candlesticks and vases. He didn’t
like it. He didn’t get it. Until one day … (Filmed at TEDxMet.)
Luke Syson joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012 as the Iris
and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge of European Sculpture and
Decorative Arts. This year, he co-curated the small but innovative
exhibition “Plain or Fancy? Restraint and Exuberance in the Decorative
Arts.” Before joining the Met Syson was Curator of Italian Painting
before 1500 and Head of Research at the National Gallery, London. While
at the National Gallery, he was curator of the exhibition “Renaissance
Siena: Art for a City,” and in 2011 he organized the groundbreaking
“Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan.”
Syson was
also one of the curators who organized the acclaimed Enlightenment
Gallery at The British Museum and was part of the team that planned the
new galleries for Medieval and Renaissance Art at the Victoria &
Albert Museum.
