Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
[enlarge]
Claire Curneen, ‘Catherine and her Wheel’, (detail), height 69cm, 2003.
Photo: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd.
Mission Gallery, Swansea
13 November – 15 January
Reviewed by: Natasha Mayo
The Mission Gallery provides an evocative venue for Curneen’s ceramic figures. Once a chapel for local fisherman, it still retains the curve of the apse at the far end of the exhibition space and reflects light through the distinctive lancet arcs of the widows onto interior walls. Against this backdrop, Curneen’s series of martyred saints enact their tragedies.
The architectural features of the building, in serving to remind us of the figures’ iconography, draw attention to their physical, bodily predicament. They are caught between life and death. Though fatally wounded – St Sebastian by arrows and St Catherine by the wheel – they remain standing, pious, staring ahead in calm resignation. This contradiction is so often depicted in religious imagery and yet the title of the exhibition, ‘Succour’, appears to question their surrender, its meaning: [n] assistance in time of difficulty, [v] help in a difficult situation, more a commentary upon the futility of relinquishing a life for a cause, than homage – a concern with both historical and contemporary resonance.
The figures bleed, their bodily fluid inextricably bound by symbol and properties to the preciousness of gold, seeping through the fine membrane of their skin. This equation of material to subject matter is a significant aspect of Curneen’s work. That the figures are constructed from porcelain also suggests that they are too delicate, too frail to be of mortal flesh, but rather ethereal, celestial beings. The only hint at any self-determination is given on occasions where the tips of their fingers have been dipped in gold, demonstrating that they have touched their wounds, responded to their fate, and where tears of transparent glaze have made their painted eyes run a little down their cheeks. Curneen has achieved a fusion rare in figurative sculpture, that of technical skill, aesthetic sensibility and humanity.
Writer detail:
Dr Natasha Mayo is a practitioner, freelance writer and lecturer in ceramics at University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.
Venue detail:
Mission Gallery
Gloucester Place, Maritime Quarter, Swansea SA1 1TY
No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?
To post a comment you need to login
Back to top