Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Bothy Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield 10 June – 27 August
Reviewed by: Elizabeth de Stanford Wallitt
Sue Mundy's reduction-fired stoneware vessels and textured ceramic forms seem to fall into two distinct categories. Her early work is characterised by an obsession with natural forms and textures such as pebbles, rocks and other objects hewn from the landscape, whilst her more recent studies concentrate on the human figure – depicting dismembered torsos and castrated phalluses. The slips and glazes added to the forms following firing have, in many cases, been developed by Mundy's use of sharp instruments in grating, scratching, gouging and scarring the final forms. In hand-built pieces like Coiled Form, Mundy echoes the rhythms of nature in even spirals of incised rings around the vessel, as if setting up her own microcosmic planetary system.
The latest developments in Mundy's works include medium scaled studies on the human figure. Work No 2, a hand-coiled form, shows us the artist studying the human torso. The smoothly amputated headless form (the size of a small adult's torso) with rounded stumps where the limbs should be, gesticulates to the viewer with its headless presence. The undulations of the torso suggest a presence within the form engaged in a struggle between the inner and outer world. In torsos and phallic forms, Mundy's interest in the human condition develops into a study of the darker side of humanity. These bodily parts have been dismembered, abused, tortured and left gaping on full display. Following in the footsteps of Goya and later Jake and Dinos Chapman, here we witness Mundy's own ceramic re-enactment of the Disasters of War, played out in the twisted forms and the battle between the ceramic surface and the emotions beneath. Mundy's new work is her best yet, marking her maturation as a serious artist engaged with sublime subject matter and the innovative use of the traditionally restrictive medium of ceramics.
Jo Gorner's new body of etchings, displayed alongside Mundy's work and shown here for the first time, employ aquatint to produce straightforward uncluttered designs. The series of prints was inspired by the artist's recent trip to the remote Scottish island of Harris. Gorner uses the landscape as a starting point for the geometric forms, carefully paring down the repetitive elements she observes in the natural world to create her own spare, simple vocabulary. In some cases, Gorner employs eastern calligraphic motifs that serve to soften the abstract forms. These simple floating shapes add a meditative mood to Gorner's work giving the images added depth. Despite the complex layering of images in the work, the childlike naivety in many of the prints gives Gorner a direct communication with her audience.
In combining the ceramic works of Mundy and new prints by Gorner, the curators of the show have found a natural dialogue in two seemingly antithetical forms of expression – Gorner with her stylised use of texture in the landscape and Mundy's employment of texture on the surface of the vessel pieces.
Writer detail:
ELIZABETH DE STANFORD WALLITT
is a curator and writer
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