Enforced Errors | Anthony Dunlop
I create functional ceramic vessels to be the antiques of the future. Working with a medium that has spanned human history, I am compelled to ask how ceramics can create our material future. Mixing traditional ceramic processes: wheel throwing, hand-building, and mold-making—to build, dissect, and reconstruct vessels that defy gravity in a deeply earthbound practice. Sharing an inherent relationship between myself and the material I work with, I look to the intersection of human bodies, civilization and culture in the past, present, and future through the time-tested immortality of ceramics.
This work is part of a series of installations of vessels that are constructed to relate to one another. They are hand built using molds of wheel-thrown forms and finished with sprayed wood ash glazes to push the limits of intention and accident in the final form and surface treatment.
This project was awarded the Thelma Ruck Keene Memorial Award for Ceramics (Circle Craft)
My practice revolves around function, therefore a very important part of what I do includes making conventional dinnerware. These practical pieces are an exciting showcase for my biggest love in ceramics, glazing. I often use my dinnerware as tests for glazes and surface treatments that will then find their way into my installation pieces.
For more, please follow me on instagram @antlerceramics or visit www.antlerceramics.com
Vessels | Sabrina Boulay
Everyday Things
Figuring things out by making things.
I mainly create functional work and was enticed by the concept of creating pitchers for my final semester at ECU; large, versatile, and needing a lot of care to be truly functional, one would think that would have been enough to keep me satisfied. So did it? Not really. It started out strong but then the plan of pitchers devolved into the broader idea of pouring vessels, and then I started thinking about how if I was making something that pours I should have something to pour into.
Four weeks into the semester, and several leaps in logic, I had expanded on my original idea of pitchers and was creating a myriad of objects around the concept of pouring and receiving. My professors trying desperately to put me back on the path of making pitchers or even just to understand how I had gotten to where I had. That happens a lot. I tend to get swept away in making, always playing with new ideas. I think by doing, each action lending into another, and the more I do the more there is to think about.
But it can be a vicious cycle, always acting and reacting with no moment to rest. I want my work to evoke energy, but I find many of my final pieces lacking. There always just seems to be something missing. There is a Japanese concept called MA, which is the concept of pause or space. I find that my favourite pieces are the ones where I gave myself a moment to exist with the piece, to consider it individually. There were always so many deadlines and time limits for creating work in the academic environment. In ceramics, the process is quite lengthy, slow and meticulous, which means that there are even more deadlines and time limits when put in relation to meeting class deadlines. As such, you could be working on a piece that you have already planned out for the next several weeks which turns you more into a part of the machine instead of an active creator. In my practice, where I rush from one concept to another, I want to open myself more to MA. Maybe now, with no more deadlines and all the time in the world, I’ll be able to find that balance. Or maybe I’ll find MA in my chaos.
Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
though the space between them is the essence of the wheel;
Pots are formed from clay, though the space inside them is the essence of the pot;
Walls with windows and doors form the house,
though the space within them is the essence of the house.
ENTER HERE | Anna Luth
ENTER HERE, 2019
Installation with cone 6 ceramic forms, synthetic rope, plastic, and MDF board
Photos courtesy of Artist.
Inspired by material culture and the way objects can dictate movement through space, ENTER HERE is an installation comprised of ceramic objects and everyday materials that together, create an environment that paradoxically possesses the subtle control one might perceive in a garden, and the chaos of a construction site.
This conceptually generated work considers the hierarchy of materials and the ways in which objects script behaviour in physical space. Using installation as a mode of phenomenological experience, the clay sculptures act as physical barriers that simultaneously allow access while preventing movement, causing the viewer to question if they have truly been afforded permission to enter the space.
Pick Up a Tile, 2020
Documentation of performative installation, using 49 unfired clay tiles
Photos courtesy of Sophia Middleton and Artist.
Forty-nine unfired clay tiles occupy a room. They rest in piles, stacks, and rows, awaiting movement. The unfired clay is a mixture of discarded clay from the ceramic studio that is repurposed and reclaimed. It is cheap. It is dirty. Familiar diamond plate pattern is carved into the clay, creating a relief that would normally be seen outdoors on metal surfaces. This tread is designed to prevent slipping and is typically found on industrial materials. Using fragile hand-carved clay as a body to carry this pattern associated with safety, creates tension and raises questions about perceived stability. The spaces between the tiles are empty channels, separating the pieces into a grid. I thought about the grid as a stage or a comfort zone, and wanted to use gesture and movement to orchestrate an interactive installation that would confuse static boundaries.
I began this collaborative performance by handing out a small piece of paper that said, “Pick Up a Tile” to each participant. I used my physical interaction with the tiles to encourage group participation. The instruction “Pick Up a Tile,” and my performance functioned as the control, and the response of the participants was a variable of chance.
ABOUT
Anna Luth is an interdisciplinary artist who works in expanded ceramics, performance, and installation to explore obstacles and boundaries relating to phenomenological experience. Using labor-intensive methods of making, Luth considers the ways performativity can activate art-objects while creating collaborative encounters. Originally from Alberta, Luth is the 2017 recipient of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts’ Queens Golden Jubilee Scholarship. She is thankful to live and work in Vancouver on the unceded Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice involves a variety of materials, but I continuously turn to clay because of the way it is persuaded by touch. I work with both fragile clay in its unfired state and durable fired ceramic in order to raise questions about the perceived stability of the material, and the way it incites a hyper-awareness of the body. The paradoxical tension of clay drives my practice, and my creative process is a balance of chance and control; I am fascinated by tension that creates inconsistencies and fails to land in one place.
I observe patterns of construction and destruction in my surroundings: temporarily cordoned-off sites redirect, exclude, and ‘improve’ physical space. I often reference the vocabulary of material-culture in my work— namely industrial materials that are often associated with safety— because these recognizable visual cues elicit specific behaviours and movement as we renegotiate disrupted interior and exterior environments.
Making is a physical and performative experience; I am fully engaged in the process and my movement/labour is embedded in the sculpture. Performative gestures and instructional titles or scores are inspired by the Fluxus Movement and installation art. When my ceramic objects are completed, it is my intention to use the movement of myself and the viewer to activate the work. Ceramic history is intrinsically bound to community and function, and is carried through to present-day quotidian activities like eating and drinking. I see my work as functional in the way that my intention is to bring people together, to create an encounter facilitated by objects.
