LONDON—Each year at the Royal College of Art, there’s a whole open house and exhibition devoted to students’ work in progress. Sight Unseen was able to attend one of these events within RCA’s Ceramics & Glass program to check out several emerging artists.
What we found there was a study in experimentation — clay that had been manipulated into terrazzo-like slabs, perforated bricks, stringy lumps, punched-in blobs, donut-like lamps, and meticulous geometrics — and almost nothing that looked like it had been turned on a traditional potter’s wheel.
Sight Unseen gave us a sneak peek inside the medium’s increasingly experimental future highlighting the practice of four promising young ceramicists.
Ines Suarez de Puga
Having just graduated from the Royal College of Art Ceramics & Glass course with a specialization in surface design, Ines Suarez de Puga says her interests lie in surface and texture in color. Her design process relies on in-depth experimentation with an emphasis on developing materials and techniques to create one-off experimental surfaces.
Terra Table
Check out more of her work on instagram.
Victoria Andrew
BALANCE+FORM is a series of work combining glass and ceramic, material compositions become sculptural forms, according to Andrew’s RCA artist page. These compositions incorporate elements of balance and vulnerability to explore the built environment.
“These pieces are about creating compositions that find a visual balance; as you move the objects around, there are areas that are revealed or hidden, yet work as a whole. These elements are interchangeable, and because of this, photography plays a big role in documenting the different iterations. The colors are dictated by the materials. The geometric forms are references to architectural structures, with materials commonly used in cities, which form a huge part of our surroundings. The materials are selected to best reflect their natural qualities; each form highlights elements unique to the material that may be overlooked in day-to-day use.”
Victoria Andrew, BALANCE + FORM, 2017, Terracotta, glass, rubber. Click for larger image
Mette Marie Lyng-Petersen
Mette Marie Lyng-Petersen says her work investigates ambience through the manipulation of functional and sculptural objects.
“I have a fascination for the domestic and how we express our self with in our homes, and use the interior as a tool to create a certain ambience. Wonderment of the everyday environment is something that intrigues me. I make bespoke interior objects with focus on uncanny and intriguing surfaces that speak to the senses.”
Check out more of her work on instagram.
Yao Wang
According to Yao Wang‘s RCA artist page, her work was inspired by contemporary choreography, especially that of Pina Bausch.
Through first a series of forms, she observes and re-interprets the dialogues between space, dancers and viewers. She described her pieces as exploring qualities of emotion, energy and life. They have a sense of liberation and move from the static to the dynamic, in their expression. Working with ideas of transformation and balance, she continuous to question if these qualities can be illustrated and observed in individual forms.
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