Ceramic 'employees'

The British Ceramic Biennial comes to an end on Sunday (though one of its exhibitions, at the Potteries Museum, continues a little longer).
As I said in a previous review, I was a bit disappointed with the overall achievement – especially with the grandiose claim that the Biennial was going to ‘raise the profile of ceramics’ - but some works that were on show were fascinating.

This work by Lawrence Epps is called ‘Employees’. It shows his interest in what happens to people who become part of the corporate world…

Anyway, despite my misgivings, I hope it does come back to Stoke on Trent in two years.

Halloween - coffins at BCB

Julian Stair’s two burial sarcophagi for children make a suitably ghoulish photo for Halloween today. They are a feature of the current British Ceramic Biennial exhibition at the former Spode factory in Stoke.

Made completely of black ceramic, his range of 'cinerary jars', as he calls them, are not just for artistic effect. Julian seems to think they are an alternative to wooden coffins.  (Out of picture is a huge, black, upright, man-sized urn, in which he is proposing one would place a corpse...).
Hmm.

Links:  Julian Stair / British Ceramics Biennial

Ceramics without zing

The British Ceramic Biennial (2011) is going on in Stoke at the moment. It’s supposed to be a huge six week jamboree of all that’s best on the ceramics and pottery scene, but it all feels disturbingly low-key to me. The number of venues doing very much has reduced considerably since the last one in 2009. Maybe it’s the recession.

The old Spode Pottery factory in Stoke town centre is more or less abandoned now after Spode got into trouble and had to be taken over.  However, as you can see, its large, empty spaces have provided the ideal site for the exhibitions being mounted during the BCB.

It’s all free of course, so one shouldn’t complain I suppose, but I did feel the site – and the way things were displayed – did lack a certain zing.

Link: British Ceramic Biennial