Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Spacex Gallery, Exeter 3 July – 31 August
Reviewed by: John Furse
The medium is clay – the message think again. Three separate installations involving three different states of mind, with three differing effects.
Paul Astbury offers unfired wet clay objects, often mass-produced ornaments or domestic crockery, sealed within airtight vitrines. The objects sweat, building up condensation inside the enclosed space, partially misting our view. In Soft Bodies set in a darkened corridor, a sense of claustrophobia and mystery ensues as we question what it is that lies beyond the blurred picture-plane and what exactly it is that we are invited to look at.
Anya Gallaccio has fashioned Apple Tree, a life-size bronze cast, bearing forty red porcelain apples. Itself a singularly beautiful object, the tree carries many implied references both biblical and otherwise. It stands isolated, lonely and forlorn and for all its opulent beauty one is reminded of feet of clay.
Of the three participants, it is Keiko Sato that makes the most lasting impact with her 'work in progress'. Seemingly intended as an ongoing preoccupation with no known conceivable end, it is a scattering of familiar domestic objects that splatter and shatter themselves across the smooth surface of the gallery as though of their own accord. Dishes, plants, rice, spaghetti, tea, coffee, flour, soil, clay, the detritus of daily life – urban reminders of the passing of time; a collage of both the sordid and the sublime.
For all the spontaneity and apparent off-handedness of Sato's piece, her art and method appear as one. All three artists succeed with clay in their different ways, yet it is Sato who challenges us most directly to think more about the message than the medium.
Writer detail:
JOHN FURSE
is a writer and critic
Venue detail:
No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?
To post a comment you need to login
Back to top