Introduction to Ceramics, 2013

Exhibition Review:

LUMINOUS by Greg Daly

I went to see Greg’s exhibition about two months ago. I was learning the based skills of ceramics and haven’t had a good understanding of contemporary ceramics work at that moment. The reason of why I decided to see his exhibition was I saw the postcards in classroom which are very beautiful. I thought the blue color was awesome and I wanted to see these work closely.
In his exhibition I found it was totally difference if you exhibit only one single work or a series work in the gallery. When you exhibit a series work, your work can have a connection of each other. “I am in the sea” was my first impression of Greg’s works.
All of Greg’s works are between 20cmX30cm and his works’ form is normal vessel shape (in my opinion). I don’t think his vessels have any implied function. I think they are just containers. But Greg’s works’ surface is luminous and colorful. I realized his works are more like landscape and then I found he was inspired by landscape from his statement. After I learned how to glaze and have more ideas about glaze color I considered he probably used some special glaze which we called Lustre glaze. However, I found it is very difficult to mix glaze when I have finished a lot of test pieces to try to find the color like his. The glaze will melt when they are being fire. And then I know it looks very easy to copy artists’ ideas but people call them professional has their reason.
Greg’s work is my initiation of contemporary ceramics and I think this is a good beginning.

BEFORE TIME COULD CHANGE US by Alexandra Standen

When I saw Greg’s work in Sabbia Gallery there was another exhibition in there, too. They were Alexandra Standen’s work.
Compare with Greg’s works, Alexandra’s works were smaller and the color was not as luminous as Greg’s works. What’s more, her works’ shape was different of most the ceramics works. They are irregular and some works’ surface were rough. Actually I thought there were two different works of hers, one was ladder and another one is rectangle box. The ladder one was a series works. Every ladder looks difference because they are handmade. I considered it could be very difficult to make these works because most of their height was only 3cm. The rectangle box one was quite small too. I thought this artist may be preferred create tiny works. I found an interesting thing when I looked around: the Alexandra’s works which were exhibited in the upstairs looked better than the one in the middle of the stairs. The upstairs one was in the nature light and the stairs one were in the artificial light. This difference makes the same works looked different.
Alexandra is a talent artist because she has a lot of ideas about her work. And then I knew she was a 2011 winner of the Sabbia Gallery Solo Exhibition Prize. I learned a lot from Alexandra’s work: I found ceramic works can have different shape, not only the traditional form but also can change to some daily shape; the surface can also be rough; the light in gallery even can change art works’ quality.

RARELY SEEN - AN EXHIBITION by Dr Julie Bartholomew

If Alexandra’s work showed me how can ceramic works have a link of daily stuff, Julie gave me a shout about how good can ceramic works be like that. I thought this might be some new materials exhibition when I saw the information postcard first time until I went to see the exhibition.
Julie’s works were incredible vivid and even the every detail was delicate. Whatever the sprinkling can or the flower on the plate was in high performance. The size