Welcome back to NewsFile, our weekly digest of newsworthy happenings from the world of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics. In this edition, we begin with a wild three-dimensional ceramic tile structure.
Tectonic Ceramics
Material Processes and Systems (MaP+S) Group students and researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Design debuted its Ceramic Tectonics: Tile Grid Shell installation, which explores the structural capabilities of thin, large-format ceramic tiles as a self-supporting, three-dimensional pavilion-like structure at Cevisama 2018 (February 5 – 9, 2018).
Fabricated from unreinforced 6mm thick ceramic tile, the catenary form of this triangular, self-supporting grid shell is designed to minimize internal stresses and efficiently span between three points of support. The structure’s 30 ceramic ribs form a novel structural pattern of triangles and hexagons, and are a world-wide first system of this kind constructed from ceramics. The notched connections between structural ribs accommodate for a novel assembly sequence that eliminates the need for mechanical connections between intersecting ribs, and allows each rib to be installed vertically from above.
The pavilion’s novel pattern of triangles and hexagons represents the first system of it’s kind constructed from ceramics, the program writes.
Read more here.
Mapplethorpe Movie World Premiere
Mapplethorpe’s Self-Portrait
“Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures,” a movie about the provocative photographer and ceramist Robert Mapplethorpe, debuts at the 17th Annual Tribeca Film Festival later this month (April 18 – 29, 2018).
In the late 1960s, art-school dropout Robert Mapplethorpe moves into the Chelsea Hotel with dreams of stardom. He quickly becomes the enfant terrible of the photography world as the downtown counterculture of 1970s New York reaches its zenith.
The documentary is directed by Ondi Timoner and produced by actress Eliza Dushku, Nathaniel Dushku, Richard J. Bosner and Ondi Timoner.
Watch the trailer below.
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