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Muse: Reflections in Place

26th May – 11th June

Each year Bath School of Art and Design, MA Ceramics and MA Textiles students engage with and respond to the Holburne Museum’s wonderfully eclectic collection, developing knowledge and skills through research, making and exhibiting.

This year six students have created a diverse exhibition, collectively responding to the architecture of the building and its internal and external spaces; to the social history of the collection and to specific objects within it. Students have used a broad range of production techniques to research and develop ideas, including embroidery, hand building, video and laser cutting.

In Muse: Reflections in Place students have sited works in and around the existing collection and the exhibition is launched as a Holburne Up Late event. On Friday 26th May (6-9 pm), you are invited to experience the museum anew and locate the six temporary additions to the collection.

Muse: Reflections in Place will be on show at the Holburne Museum until 11 June.

I went into our studio the other day and saw this lovely combination of order and chaos:

nice tray use Emily (Harnett)…

MORE CLAY LESS PLASTIC was startedin 2014 as an open group on Facebook with the intent of creating a network between ceramicists and the public. The aim is to highlight respect for the environment by inviting people to rethink their daily habits, for example by avoiding disposable plastic.

As in the first edition that took place between September 2016 and May 2017, “MORE CLAY LESS PLASTIC – Change in your hand 2” will be an itinerant international exhibition of functional ceramic ware made by ceramicists from all over the world.

The tour will start in July 2017 in Maniago, (PN) Italy, in Museo dell’Arte Fabbrille and will travel different locations to be confirmed until May 2018.

The participation is open to ceramicists and potters of all nationalities
and ages. Only functional ware is allowed.

Please send the Application Form, the description of the work and the work to: moreclaylessplastic@gmail.com

Download Documents HERE
Deadline to submit applications: 5 June 2017

The enlightened elites — they do exist — realized, after the 1990s, that the dangers summed up in the word “climate” were increasing. Until then, human relationships with the earth had been quite stable. It was possible to grab a piece of land, secure property rights over it, work it, use it, and abuse it. The land itself kept more or less quiet.

The enlightened elites soon started to pile up evidence suggesting that this state of affairs wasn’t going to last. But even once elites understood that the warning was accurate, they did not deduce from this undeniable truth that they would have to pay dearly.

Instead they drew two conclusions, both of which have now led to the election of a lord of misrule to the White House: Yes, this catastrophe needs to be paid for at a high price, but it’s the others who will pay, not us; we will continue to deny this undeniable truth.

If this plausible fiction is correct, it enables us to grasp the “deregulation” and the “dismantling of the welfare state” of the 1980s, the “climate change denial” of the 2000s, and, above all, the dizzying increase in inequality over the past forty years. All these things are part of the same phenomenon: the elites were so thoroughly enlightened that they realized there would be no future for the world and that they needed to get rid of all the burdens of solidarity as fast as possible (hence, deregulation); to construct a kind of golden fortress for the tiny percent of people who would manage to get on in life (leading us to soaring inequality); and, to hide the crass selfishness of this flight from the common world, to completely deny the existence of the threat (i.e., deny climate change). Without this plausible fiction, we can’t explain the inequality, the skepticism about climate change, or the raging deregulation.

From ‘The New Climate’ in Harper’s Magazine. Full article here.

P.S. You don’t need contemporary satire – Jarry’s Ubu Roi says it all.

A great day with Liz A on Monday 15, who spoke about her practice, which is now out of RedHouse Ceramics Design Studio in Jingdezhen, China. Liz also spoke on a broad range of contemporary approaches to form and surface in ceramics.

Two from RedHouse:

Two from Ron Nagle, ‘the master of surface’ (I hadn’t realised that he models the glaze drips):

6.25H x 4.5W x 6.5D, in. 2013

And the workshop in the afternoon: