London artist Robert Dawson has created four blue and white limited edition plates available exclusively at the CFile Shop.
Each work is produced in an edition of 25 and, while they operate independently, they also have a lot of visual and conceptual resonance with each other. Beyond the fact that each work is blue and white, they are connected by a common exploration of the plate as a format for unusual decorative compositions. Also in this vain of exploration, and also available at CFile Shop is Dawson’s Spin, a single work comprised of an installation of six plates.
In these works Dawson presents us with designs warped by time and transitions from earlier mediums, he shows us eternal spirals and willows suddenly seized by circular motion. We’ve included descriptions of the individual works along with the photographs below.
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Above Image: Robert Dawson’s limited edition plates for CFile Shop. Clockwise from top left: Floored 3, Floored 4, Reaction, and Log 2014. Cobalt blue print on bone china, 10 5/8″ diameter each. Each produced in a limited edition of 25.
Robert Dawson, Floored 3, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china, 10 5/8″ diameter. Produced in a limited edition of 25.Floored 3, reworks an old Minton floor tile design. For this piece, Dawson pulls the medieval-looking interlace design off the floor and onto the plate, and, as if in the process, he skews and warps it. One almost gets the sense that this skewing and warping may have occurred somewhere in the process of appropriation; in its movement from the middle ages, to the Minton tile, and now to Dawson’s plate; the pattern has become fluid. The result is that the circular elements of the pattern now become warped ellipses. While the plate is actually a nearly flat, somewhat concave disc with a rim, the pattern suggests a roughly spherical volume. On this suggested volume, the pattern, like the ocean, is pulled into an uneven geoid by some kind of gravity.
Robert Dawson, Floored 4, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china,
10 5/8″ diameter. Produced in a limited edition of 25.Floored 4, which continues the exploration of Floored3, takes this same interlace pattern and conforms it to the shape of the plate. The multiple irregular ellipses on Floored 3 now become a single perfect circle aligned with the center of Floored 4. As a result, the pattern enlarges towards the rim, and the other “ellipses” become strangely flattened on one side. The effect is a feeling that the pattern is being stretched centrifugally.
Robert Dawson, Log, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china,
10 5/8″ diameter. Produced in a limited edition of 25.Log departs from the interlace pattern of the Floored pieces, but it extends the meditation on circular motion to one on spiraling motion. Log harkens to Dawson’s studies in electronics and telecommunications in his early 20’s and his work with extremely high cycles-per-second radio waves modulated by low-frequency audio waves. For Dawson, everything everywhere is about cycles, from the subatomic world through to the organic rhythms of life, the machinery of the industry, financial cycles, to the spiraling of galaxies. The line on Log is a logarithmic spiral – drawn onto a circular object. Log balances the graphic vulgarity of this volute with a refined sense of white space and a profound cosmological notion. While Floored 4 seems to suggest that the pattern expands indefinitely from the center of the plate, Log suggests that we are only catching a fragment of the spiral. As the pattern extends into the imaginary space beyond the plate, do we imagine it forming an ionic capital and later describing the rest of a column, or do we see it extending indefinitely, its center mis-aligned with that of the plate?
Robert Dawson, Reaction, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china,
10 5/8″ diameter. Produced in a limited edition of 25.Reaction breaks the orderly graphic manipulations of the other three plates and expresses a kind of reckless abandon. In this way, it also draws attention to the very action of mark making. In the case of Reaction, the marks are energetic, chaotic and rife with the artist’s hand. While Log revels in the void white space, Reaction is entirely covered in shades of blue, as though the cobalt dust could not be confined to a discrete mark.
Details of Robert Dawson, Spin, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china
10 5/8″ diameter. Open edition.Dawson’s Spin is an installation of six plates which riffs on the traditional willow pattern design but also seems to act like a keystone to the entire discussion of circular motion, pattern, mark-making and ceramic production that’s alluded to in all the works available by Dawson at CFile Shop. A major piece currently in an open edition, Spin is intended to be installed in a horizontal line. The piece, with it’s suggested circular motion points to traditional ceramic production methods while employing modern industrial and digital techniques.
Installation view of Robert Dawson’s Spin, 2014, cobalt blue print on bone china 10 5/8″ diameter. Open edition. All images courtesy of the artist.
Browse Robert Dawson’s limited edition plates at CFile Shop
Read more about Dawson on CFile
Visit Robert Dawson at Aesthetic Sabotage
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