Showing posts with label Ceramic Art London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ceramic Art London. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Letter from the CPA council circulated to CPA members about the future of the organisation as a whole and of Ceramic Review in particular.




The letter above, in two separate images, is the one circulated to CPA members. It seems clear and innocuous enough but is startling in its deceit. The reality is much simpler. The independent editor has been removed and has not been given the choice to return. The new 'guest' editor is a CPA member and, I believe, former chair of the CPA council. The editorial, far from being 'no longer in-house' is about as 'in-house' as it could get. The notion of a 'guest' here is meaningless since there is no editor, as such, to invite the guest. Moreover, and, arguably, even more worrying, there is no mention whatsoever of the writing, editorial, or publishing experience of any of these people comprising this new, collective, editorship. The appointment of Jack Doherty as the new 'guest' editor has now been announced on the Ceramic Review Facebook page. The first comment it attracted sums it all up nicely: 'The maffia (sic) strikes again.'  The first comment to arrive on my share of the document above was, 'What worries me is that the same (one or two) people are now in charge of who gets into the CPA, who gets into Ceramic Art London AND what is published in Ceramic Review.' Quite. I wouldn't argue with a single word of either of those two comments. 

Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Ceramic Art London, 2010

Here is the 6th Ceramic Art London at the Royal College of Art. It looked tired. Only six years old and tired already. It’s not so much that the work itself looks tired, it’s the overall curation of the event that is the problem. I would suggest parking restrictions. I mean a simple rule – you can park your pots here for two consecutive years, but no more, and no return within two years.  That would help to refresh the show a bit but it needs more than that. I don’t know who is on the selection panel or on what basis they select, but it is clear they are not keeping the look of the whole in mind. If they need a wider variety of makers to apply for selection then they need to say so. At the moment it looks like they’re short of applications. There are far too many people who have been showing year after year. There were very few new faces. The inclusion of two makers of table ware in bone china, (Lowri Davies and Maria Lintott) was very welcome indeed and another, slightly over complicated, but nonetheless appealing collection of work by Solomia Zoumaras, (there for her second year), was also a welcome change.

CAL is not a survey of contemporary ceramic practice, no single show or art fair could achieve that and certainly not in that format – it is the standard approach to art fairs with a single small, kiosk type space for each maker. Susan O’ Byrne took over two spaces to show her troupe of dancing vermin, (one muntjac, ( a small deer), a pack of galavanting foxes and a gathering of crows,) but apart from that, it was one space each and set out your pots as tastefully as you can. Apart from O’Byrne, and the three named above, there was really nothing fresh, experimental, progressive, or thought provoking, - not the right space for contemplative or thought-provoking work anyway – but only these four made me stop and look again and want to see and know more. For a show this size, and this established, it isn’t enough.

Looking over the CAL catalogues for the last six years, the buzz and excitement of the launch in 2005 is barely recognisable as being part of the same event. It is difficult to discern if this is a gradual fade or a sudden collapse. The 2005 catalogue includes a collection of commentary from Grayson Perry, contributions from Edmund de Waal, Louise Taylor, (then head of the Crafts Council), as well as something from a collector, Michael Evans and from Jack Doherty, chair of the CPA which, with Ceramic Review, hosts the event. Variety breathed life into the show. Perry is, of course, a bona fide celebrity and can’t fail or, at that time, couldn’t fail to bring a sprinkling of stardust to almost any occasion. Edmund de Waal is the kind of star whose writing means something. In this otherwise unassuming catalogue, he writes a response to Stephen Bayley’s article published a year earlier in The Independent on Sunday, (Feb.15th 2004). The title of the article was: Pottery: The Evil in Our Society. While, according to de Waal, Bayley berates potters who, ‘did not know their place any more,’ de Waal himself responds by making the simple observation that they never had: ‘As to making installations, they were the currency of European Modernism,’ he remarks, after a brief discourse on the less functional aspects of Bauhaus.

The point is that there was lively debate, a sense of boundaries being broken, a sense, in short of a kind of renaissance in craft and, in particular, in ceramics. If commentators like Bayley and also Germaine Greer could get sufficiently steamed up about it to write articles in broadsheet papers, then we were certainly doing something right.

Now we are in a different phase. Ceramic work in mainstream and blue chip art galleries is becoming commonplace. It maybe tokenistic or only a brief flirtation, a kind of cultural tourism – let’s give this a try while we’re in recession. It doesn’t much matter, the danger for ceramics now is complacency. Where are the new voices, the new stars? Well they certainly weren’t at CAL. I’m not talking only about the work in the show, I’m almost more concerned about the ‘Discovery’ section – these are lectures and demonstrations. Whereas in earlier years we have had Clare Twomey (2009) talking about installation and Jeremy Theophilus talking about the forthcoming Biennial, both with a strong sense of mission and future developments, it seems we have now returned to a round up of fairly standard makers doing picture shows and demonstrating making techniques - tried and trusted, or maybe just tired and musty. Closer examination of the six catalogues I now have reveals that the seed of this is there right at that start. De Waal is recycled three times, the makers who give their presentations and demonstrations are the ones we’ve seen a thousand times before. Where is ‘the Discovery’ exactly? Is it not usual for London shows to curate new work rather than established work? How on earth can a public develop any sense of discernment, any experience of looking and deciding, if they are never presented with new work to consider and respond to?

In his 2005 essay, de Waal issues the following warning concerning the ways we might respond to Bayley’s attack: ‘There are other options, of course: bunkering down is an option, preaching to the converted is an option, talking to ourself is an option.’ This year’s CAL is disappointing because it has not heeded that warning. In responding only to the desires of the known and established ‘collectors,’ bringing in only the ‘tried and tested,’ it is, above all, talking to itself and people who talk to themselves  quickly become boring. CAL cannot afford to look this dull again. The visitors and buyers will depart and with them will go much of the good will and enthusiasm that has been built up over the past six years.

For a different angle, please take a good look at the coverage of this event at Sliponline. You will find vast numbers of excellent pictures and probably some lively commentary - it says 'from Tuesday,' I guess this means Tuesday, March 9th or 16th.

Sunday, 9 March 2008

Ceramic Art London, Feb 29 - March 2nd 2008


Ceramic Art London, website here is a big posh pottery fair that takes place in the Dinosaur Paddock at the back of the Natural History Museum, in what was once another of the C word’s temples: the Royal Palace of Applied Yawns. It’s an iffy looking 70s building between Kensington Bore and the Consorting Princes, nuzzling up to Prince Albert and the Royal Organ. You can look at the A-Z and see for yourself. Well, imagine my surprise, to find, once again, the White Rabbit lurking in the undergrowth, looking much more sprightly this time though and no sooner had I spotted him, than I heard the Giant Dormouse was shortly, ok tally, to be expected - you know a girl can start to feel stuck in an action replay glitch at these events after a while.

Back at the fair however, the worker bees were at their many splendoured stalls. CAL is pretty much either domestic scale pots, or domestic scale figures. There are a couple of exceptions, - I’m coming to them, - but in the main it’s pots and figures. There is something weirdly interesting about ceramic figures, as long as they’re not trying to be – well – arty. It’s the unapologetically ceramicy ones that seem to work. I mean like china figurines, a bit camp. I’m thinking of Craig Mitchell’s shiney shiney pottery characters, website here and Carole Windham’s trophy-like ‘ornaments’, website here both of which are satires, I suppose, and self consciously refer to mantelpiece figures. I certainly prefer them to the earnest ‘truth to materials’ brigade – ‘female’ figures with no bosoms – I’m sorry I just can’t be doing with that sort of thing. Happily, neither could the selectors at CAL, it seems, at any rate they weren’t there – hooray! Or maybe they’ve just gone out of fashion. Even bigger Hooray.
This posting is going to celebrate inconsistency, because the ‘earnest truth to materials’ pots were out in force and I loved them. Gareth Mason’s giant placenta and toothpaste blobs oozed – I think he’s finding his feminine self, or the pot’s feminine self, and Richard Phethean’s big earthenware gestural jugs - um – thrusted – yep, masculine, but in the most cheerful sort of way. (Pictures on CAL website, more links to be added.)
The post-modern strand was admirably represented by Philomena Pretsell – welcome back- whose stall sported a fine collection of her pastry-folded domestic table-ware/ display-ware with lots of gold and drawings on so you’re not in any doubt at all about its desire to decorate- with brass knobs on. It’s aggressively feminine – HOORAY x 100 – with anxious moments, sort of flickering. Quite menopausal really, which is probably why I liked it so much. It’s those purple patches that do it, and a fiercely counter-intuitive smudge on the rim of a yellow cup where she’s brushed something on that’s come out brownish, and you know it’s a really bad lipstick moment. LOVE IT. (Pictures on CAL website and above)
It’s difficult to avoid a beauty parade with this kind of gig, because in many ways that’s exactly what it is, Ceramics’s annual fashion show. It’s not representative, it doesn’t show installation or architectural work, or any of the mixed media or cross-disciplinary work, so it’s a glimpse of some of what goes on in contemporary ceramics, rather than a survey, but no worse for that. The CPA, - there goes another C word, this is the Craft Potters Association – awards a prize, which went to a very sleek selection by Carina Ciscato, so, not to be left out, The C Word will award some prizes too.
Drum Roll:
The winner of this year’s, inaugural, Golden Fanny plus rosette for Best in Show 2008 goes to Aneta Regel Deleu,
website here for her truly fabulous blistered, pitted, festering, glorious mint green, yellow and red confections, neither pot nor figure , which lied about the materials, and established a different set of truths. GORGEOUS.
Highly Commended Golden Fanny rosettes go to Gareth Mason and to Philomena Pretsell, who celebrated the feminine from opposite ends of the ceramic spectrum.

Now all I have to do is persuade the Temple of the Applied Arts – that’s the one NEXT to the Natural History Museum to host the award ceremony sometime. This ambition will have to wait though, because The C Word has other matters to attend to.