Welcome back to NewsFile, our round-up of the latest newsy tidbits and happenings from the world of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics. This week, we showcase the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and how its coordinator Grayson Perry is using the show to actively subvert expectations.
Grayson Perry’s Summer Exhibition Obliterates Boundaries
The Guardian reports artist Grayson Perry, who is this year’s coordinator, offered the publication a tour of the 250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (June 12 – August 25, 2018) for which Perry and his committee of fellow artists handpicked over 1,300 artworks of various mediums from RA members, invited artists and submissions from unknown artists.
The Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones writes Perry used his coordinator position to fill the summer show with crap.
By including so much art the selectors would normally put straight in the reject pile, this show charts the subconscious of our times. Haunted by Grenfell – I counted two works of art about it – and divided by Brexit, this is nothing like the garden party nation the summer show traditionally suggests.
There’s something odd happening in art, and Perry has caught the moment. Boundaries of age and style, cool and uncool no longer seem to have anything to do with art’s future. Perhaps its future lies in the past. Or vice versa. I don’t know where I am after this crazy show. This is the most liberating exhibition of new art I’ve seen for ages, because it obliterates definitions of what’s good or bad, archaic or modern, and invites us to sample all the ways people can use a thing called “art” to express feelings and ideas. The more the merrier, the madder the better.
The Summer Exhibition has been held annually since 1769, and as the Royal Academy of Arts writes, it’s the biggest, brightest and most colorful edition yet.
Read more here.
Now Available: Judy Chicago’s Pussy Plates
Prospect NY, in collaboration with Judy Chicago, released a new series of limited edition plates from The Dinner Party (1979), Hyperallergic writes. Originally part of Chicago’s triangular feminist history show, four of the vulvular plates (the Primordial Goddess, Sappho, the Amazon warriors and Queen Elizabeth I) are now––for the first time ever––available to actually nosh from as fine bone china replicas.
Chicago tells Hyperallergic:
“The purpose of ‘The Dinner Party’ was to spark conversations and study around the rich heritage of women in the Western world — to celebrate female figures real and imagined that had been left out of history. What better way to achieve this than through easily accessible reproductions?”
You can check out the plates and other products here.
Stay tuned throughout the week as we’ll continue to update our NewsFile with more of the latest happenings from the world of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics.
your links for the Judy Chicago plates do not show them. Her page does not have them. The PR person must have sent you this item too soon. I’m disappointed.
The only link that shows them is the word “writes” after Hyperallergic