Getting ready for the weekend at Cheeseburn Sculpture

In the run up to the next open weekend at Cheeseburn (this weekend - 29th and 30th June 2019),  local maker David Kirkland tests out his new kiln with his latest batch of sustainable ceramic bird boxes. The excitement (and tension) mounts as the lid door opens to reveal...

Sustainable Ceramics will have a range of bird boxes for sale at Cheeseburn over the summer. For more information about the Cheeseburn Open Weekends, please visit http://cheeseburn.com/

Kate Stobbart : No Niceties contributing artist

Kate Stobbart exhibited a work called Fifteen minutes of picking at clay to the No Niceties exhibition.

Damián Ortega at The Fruitmarket Gallery

The current exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh left me a little underwhelmed. For an artist who is known as "one of the most prominent artists of the new Mexican generation" I found the work to be rather unoriginal and dated.

"The works in the exhibition are predominantly made from clay, the most elemental of materials. Ortega uses clay to form waves, sculpt icebergs and to track the eroding power of a river on a sequence of plains made from brick."

  

The hanging clay blobs reminded me vaguely of Rosie Hughes-Jones' degree show exhibition at Glasgow School of Art in 2008, but without the amazingly aluring scent that made Rosie's work a real sensory experience. 

It also reminded me of Cornelia Parker's installation 'Cold Dark Matter', but without the sense of action that is so implicit in Parker's installation.

   

Again, the clay forms on the floor could be likened to Anthony Gormley's installation Field, but the scale of Ortega's work did not create the grandeur that Gormley managed to achieve with Field.

For more information about the exhibition visit

http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/

Circus Between Worlds introduces Olivia Turner

Olivia Turner’s practice encompasses sculpture, video, performance and drawing. Her work is deeply rooted within the idea of knowledge gained through making. Turner’s presence is felt throughout her work, gaining elemental understandings of material and matter through haptic, primitive validations of touch and observation.

For Circus Between Worlds Turner is transformed into an ‘Extruder of Language’, exploring the communicative, pre-linguistic capacity and material memory of clay. Becoming one who is incapable of expression by speech, alternatively seeking a sculptural expression of the sensation of language.

For more information about Olivia Turner's practice, visit her website:
http://www.oliviaturner.co.uk

Second tetris cast is revealed

After the excitement of revealing the first of the tetris casts on Friday, today I dismantled the second tetris mould.

I had built a clay form at the bottom of the mould, over which I poured the layers of coloured plaster.

Removing the clay was a slow process!

Moulds for new casts

Over the last couple of weeks I have been busy working in the wood workshop and the casting workshop making a couple of moulds for new sculptures.

Moving on from my previous casts, I wanted to explore new shapes and on a larger scale. Continuing with my interest in play, games and building, I am using tetris shapes.


This mould is for a plaster sculpture that will be grey on the outside with coloured layers inside. 



I begun by going round the perimeter of the mould and creating walls of grey plaster. Each face needed to be made separately, and so the plaster was mixed in batches. I had mixed the correct amount of pigment to be able to cover all the surfaces  in order to maintain a consistent colour. 

I have built inside the mould with clay so that when I pour the plaster inside the mould, there is a space where the plaster cannot fill (where the clay is). Once the plaster is dry and I remove the clay, the negative space will be revealed and the layers of colour will be visible.

Coloured straws

I was visually attracted to a packet of coloured straws and had an urge to do something with them.

In this instance I made a pyramid of clay, cut the straws to different lengths and stuck them into the clay in no particular pattern.