USE AND ORNAMENT
Clay College Diploma students were commissioned to each make a set of 12 Yunomis for AirSpace’s Exhibition ‘Use and Ornament’ as part of the Britist Ceramics Biennial.
USE AND ORNAMENT is a multi-media group exhibition which explores contemporary understandings of clay, as material and resource, the role and purposes it might have today; and delves into what ceramics can offer us, as we move into a time of recovery and rebuilding. Use and Ornament, creates a space for respite and refuge from a time of difficulty, setting out some practical uses for this very earthly of materials, and how it might help us to recover, when the time comes. But it also goes further, in the belief that the role of art, and therefore the occupation of the artist and maker, is to create moments that move us beyond the bounds of the earthly, to that important place of imagination, exploration and departure. An exhibition in two halves, the works shown discuss the need to make more sustainable choices in how we make and consume, acknowledging a need to shift our value systems in relation to global resources. We then move on to recognise that there is good reason to celebrate the sublime; for as much as we need our art to have a role and a purpose, sometimes that role and purpose can be to lift us out of the hole we are in, even if just for a moment, to dream of the future.
The exhibition comprises works by 6 artists/collectives, including work made during a public-facing and participatory artist residency, completed in August 2021.
