Alan Cristea Gallery: Edmund de Waal

I was crisscrossing around Bond Street when I pass by the Alan Cristea Gallery a commercial art gallery in
Cork Street  when the exhibition inside got my attention.The artist on show is Edmund de Wall.

The title of the exhibition is a Thousand Hours an installation of black and white cases open and closed of a rectangular size in one room and in the other room another closed case of a large scale that one can walk  move around giving it more of an architectural feel. Inside of the cases one can see long  tubular ceramics or flat ceramics of a similar shape and of similar colour positioned closely together in the case of the tubular ceramics or one on top of the other in the case of the flat ceramics both are made out of porcelain. The colours of the pots work together with the outside colours of the cases, they give out to the viewer a sense of harmony combined with the rectangular precision of the shape of the cases which make one think more of carefully designed objects of an architectural nature viewed in public spaces then pottery based in a house. Also  the pots are individually made by the artist and have a natural imprecise feel to them which  are counteracted by the precision of the shape of the cases which give out the idea that the artist wants to hold the vessels somehow in space not to frame them but to be wanting them to hold them in their movement this is allowed by the fact that the viewer can walk around or through the cases and feels surrounded by the vitrine pots from below and above . Some are easy to see while other are hidden behind the opaque glass of the cases, so they are out of reach. Edumund de Wall said that he liked 'to record the thousand hours of tiredness, exhilaration (spent while making the work): my sense of the fleeting moment and its afterlife'.

The works I have seen at the Gallery where: Weights & Measures,2011:small stacked ceramic dishes apparently it was inspired by the work of Richard Serra Weight and Measure which was exhibited in the Halls of Tate Britain in 1992.

Poetry also features in Edmund de Wall work in pieces such as a Lament 2012, Three Poems of Return 2012 and in The Pleidaes Hide Away,2012

The first one is based on Giotto's 'Lamentation' this can be seen by the fact that the work is been installed up high to give a feeling of release similar to the Angels in Giotto's Lamentation where they are seen above the scene of mourning of the Christ.

 

 In the second one the ideas is based on Sappho's Fragment 44 written in response to the Iliad. I also did  notice that he doesn't use the whole text of a poem but just fragments of it. The third art work is based on the ancient Greek poet Hesiod (c.750-650BC)and his work the Atronomy where he wrote about constellations, stars  and on the Pleiades the  mythological daughters on Atlas which where considered by Greek astronomers as distinct constellations. All of this is represented using 'stopped' shelves to signify the fragments of Hesiod's text of the constellations combined with the black glazes of the actual pieces to evoke the essence of the galaxies at night.

One other important reference to the specific piece of In Praise of Shadows, 2012 is the essay by Ju'ichiro Tanizaki on Japanese aesthetics where it's discussed the importance of light and dark and how some things should be left in the shadows and others should be brought to light. All of this made me think that Japanese aesthetics as had a strong influence on his work and the way he works and displays his art work. Over all he is been able to successfully join traditional methods of work with contemporary more conceptual  so to join east and west.With this exhibition is been able to bring into a contemporary conceptual setting pottery so to reach a wider and different audience is been able to combined traditional methods with modern methods the fine artists with the potter.

This exhibition made me rethink at the way I display my own ceramics generally I have shown my ceramics on pillars but with my current sculptural work that I have been recently making I want to experiment and place them on shelves on a wall to see what effect this has on the viewer. My ceramics are very different from Edmund de Wall works as his work the vessels seem to be mainly pottery done on a wheel. My ceramics are not done using a pottery wheel. As I see the wheel as a barrier between myself and the actual piece I am working on but I think I should definitely experiment more with different types of clays and work with porcelain and  experiment with new glazes.

 I have noticed that anyhow I do use a wider range of glazes then the once used by Edmund de Wall he seems to focus on a uniform layout he looks at the overall and how it works together while at the moment I am more interested in exploring on how the individual piece works within itself in a self sufficient way.

My ceramic sculptures have both abstract and figurative elements and I mix the two sometimes depending on what I am working on. Below is an example of my latest ceramic piece. The process of choosing the correct glazes combined with the correct temperature to fire the ceramic pieces is enjoyable exciting but also time consuming and at times frustrating as not always the ceramics come out as you think they would due to the machine not working properly or the glazes been to thin down or to thick. Still I do enjoy working in clay because it's a non rigid form of making sculptural work  and I see a lot of potential in it for conceptual work.                                                  

                                                         Mirta Imperatori copyright 2012