Yee Sookyung

Seen at London Art Fair yesterday...Korean artist Yee Sookyung from her "Translated Vases" series, at Union's stall. Was thinking along similar lines.
"...the newest works are her Translated Vase series which are sculpture composed of pieces derived from actual ceramic works, but the finished product of her work is something unfamiliar and unusual. The method she uses to attach the pieces together correspond to the restoration of valuable ancient ceramics and these works are distinctive in the sense that they allow the viewer to become mindful of notions of the what is highly valued versus what is abandoned, what is historical versus what is modern, and what is art versus what is non-art. The artist questions the viewers as to who is the artist. The act of the ceramists destroying their failed works can be read as cliché in a sense of an artist wanting a flawless piece of work but at the same time it is also a gesture of contributing scarcity to commonly made ceramics. On the other hand, the artist’s act of collecting the broken pieces to make a new piece of work, and the circus acrobat (featured in the artist's drawings) trying her best not to break the ceramics can be seen as the exact opposite gesture of the ceramists."

Text excerpted from ONE AND J. catalogue essay by Kim Hee Kyung (2006)

Lost something in translation I reckon. I could've paraphrased this but no one would've paid me for it.

http://www.oneandj.com/gallery/ex_about.php?exhibition_no=25

Spode Buffalo Pattern

Spode Staffordshire antique blue & white pottery: Boy on a Buffalo Pattern Pearlware Plate c.1795-1800
Image found at www.antiqueblueandwhite.co.uk

Identification

My new friend Emma took some tiny fragments of ceramic from my World In Pieces (aka China Blues) installation at Creekside Centre to show her parents who are keen amateur experts in porcelain & earthenware. She recently brought back the fragments which her folks had identified and labelled for me...accompanied by a paper written by the Morden Ceramic Circle about the 'Buffalo Pattern', a strange variant of the Willow Pattern...

Christmas 2009

I received my first Xmas card from Debra...a charity card from Waterstone's featuring a Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) print 'Drum Bridge and Setting Sun at Meguro'...Very thoughtful.
She sent it at the beginning of December, but I'm posting it up today because we're just having our first snow of the season...
Photo © Roger Nyle

The Sorcerers

Stayed up late the other night to watch this 1967 horror classic by Michael Reeves and starring Boris Karloff...The old couple in the film have a large dresser full of Willow Pattern...watch this segment on YouTube – the plates appear about 9 minutes in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7cg6JZ04ZA

Whatever happened to the teapots?

The Beeb are broadcasting a short series on the potteries. In "Whatever Happened to the Teapots?" Roger Law of Spitting Image fame goes back to Stoke where the team had their merchandising made (Margaret Thatcher teapots)...unfortunately it's not a podcast, but Law has written here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8350518.stm

Episode 3: "We started off by knocking off the Chinese. The original ceramics were copies of Chinese ware..."
"Until 1800ish, most people got their tableware from the Far East, then a 200-year hiccup in history when we did it, and now most people get their tableware from the Far East..."

Trevor Kiernander

I was recently overcome by acquisitiveness at this year's Goldsmiths MA Show, and bought a drawing by Trevor Kiernander (in the picture above, from left to right, the third one along the top). I am pleased to hear he is now going to be showing in the Xmas show at Bearspace, and will have his own show there in January.

See his website here.

More Frieze

Again, apologies to artists for lack of credits, except Cornelia Parker's flattened silverware at the top, which this photo doesn't do justice to...

Frieze Art Fair

Some naff pix taken on my camera phone at Frieze of some of the things I liked. Unfortunately I am unable to credit the artists...except for the plates which is Richard Wentworth (Goldsmiths lecturer, class of 79)...

Cai Guo Qiang

During Open Studios at Deptford X I had a visit from Amanda Francis (one of the DX committee) who told me of her trip to the Guggenheim in Bilbao earlier in the year where she had seen the work of an artist whose name she couldn't remember. She described it as a giant shipwreck spilling lots of broken china...

So I looked it up. Another fantastic Chinese artist, Cai Guo Qiang. I found a review here. The reviewer (Beth S. Gersh-Nesic) says of the piece: "Reflection-A Gift from Iwaki (2004), is the most sublime work of twenty-first century art, to date. An enormous excavated wooden boat, found in Iwaki, Japan, the hull is filled with and spills out buckets and buckets of mostly white (some light blue) Chinese porcelain figurines, dishes and other common vessels. Its gargantuan scale feels vaguely mythic, as if it came from the bowels of Davy Jones' locker or a Spielbergian movie set. Surely, the most indelible image of the entire show."

Cai Guo Qiang is best known for his pyrotechnics however, and was the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games, which of course were so impressive that British viewers twittered that it was all done with CGI.

Cai Guo Qiang's own site: www.caiguoqiang.com

See a video (and others) made of the Guggenheim show here.