BARNSTORMING CERAMICS
ENUCLEO — SUBVERSIVE CLAY Curated by Serena Rosevear
Pie Bolton, Penny Byrne, Samantha Dennis, Fiona Fell, Ebony Russell, Arun Sharma
Rosny Barn
Until May 19
The potentially daunting Rosny Barn space is one that asks a lot of an exhibition, and some shows simply do not work in here, but the ones that do harness the rich sense of history and space and use it to the show’s advantage. Enucleo’s curator, Serena Rosevear, aimed to create a show that removed ceramic creations from the plinth.
This doesn’t seem like that big an aim, but plinths are so fundamental in our understanding of how we see art, especially in its ceramic form, that removing them is a genuinely radical act.
To Rosevear and her chosen artist’s credit, though, the show ends up being about the potential of the ceramics form rather than about something that isn’t there, and asks a resounding question about what can be done with ceramics when it’s decided to approach it in a new way. The end result is a cohesiveness where the range of works manage to strongly interact and inform one another.
Ebony Russell’s Piped Dreams work are some that particularly stand out. Russell uses cake decorating tools to work with the clay, making remarkable objects that have the quality of coral or some kind of beautiful, flowering fungus, that is both fragile and oozing. Russell also displays these works in a remarkable way, in that her pieces hang off old furniture and other objects, looking as if they have grown or fallen there.
Arun Sharma shows a clay head slowly crumbling in water, with the dust released from the eroding visage slowly clouding the liquid and obscuring the image — it’s a portrait of fading memory, beautifully realised.
With the projections at either end of the space, strange creatures on the wall, odd growths on chairs and a glowing portal on the floor, the Barn is transformed into a metaphorical haunted space, filled not with ghosts but ideas about ceramic art that really reinvent the form. Intellectually rigorous and emotionally charged, this is a deeply satisfying show.