Welcome back to another edition of Friday videos on Cfile. You’ve had a hard week, so sit back, pour your last pot of coffee for the day and enjoy these odd clay and clay-adjacent videos we’ve plumbed from the contemporary ceramic art movement.
“G-Star / Destroy To Construct” sounds like the title of an old dancefloor industrial EP, but in actuality it is a marketing campaign for a clothing line from a few years ago. Rankin Film Productions handled the ad, which starts with a cool zoetrope of a skeletal dog in a designer jacket. The dog shatters into ceramic shards that reconstitute themselves into models wearing items from the clothing line. Plenty of fun to watch. Great music, too! You’ll have to click here to see it because privacy settings on the video forbid us to embed it.
Penny Byrne: Brutal
I saw an H.P. Lovecraft impersonator at George RR Martin’s theater in Santa Fe last night. The impersonator was taking questions like an advice columnist and answering them in character. I asked if he could suggest any coping mechanisms to deal with a lingering sense of dread for the future that has lasted for months and could last for years. His advice was to embrace dread, to sit with it, to ponder your reaction to it and ask why. Bleak, but useful.
Penny Byrne, an Australian artist, is on a similar thread. Her series Brutal at Linden New Art (Feb. 9 – March 8, 2017) dealt with her reaction to the dumpster fire year of 2016. She initially turned away from the Bad Stuff as it was happening (everywhere, all at once), but once she gathered enough will to confront it she turned out a collection of ceramics that are beautiful, sad, heartfelt and even darkly humorous. This video is presented here because maybe this advice can help you, too. Not looking away is the first step to getting your agency back and art can be a way to engage with such things at one’s own pace.
Digital Ceramics from Woodbury
Sometimes you come across a phrase that your brain rebels against, upon hearing it. “Ceramic weaving” is one of those phrases for me. Woodbury University in Burbank, California did a project exploring the uses of digitally-assisted ceramics in architecture. The results are very impressive and they make me excited to see how builders will manipulate ceramics in the future.
John Parker: Clear and Present Danger
We have a thing for time lapse videos at Cfile and this one is just swell. New Zealand artist John Parker and lighting designer Phillip Dexter created this ceramic installation Clear and Present Danger (2016) for the Te Uru Gallery. The installation is a series of ceramic cones lit by a light that changes colors very, very slowly. The gallery was kind enough to post a video of the piece at 800 percent speed, allowing you to take in its full range of motion. A shame I can’t park a chair in front of the installation and watch the light and shadows play in real time.
That’s all the ceramic videos we have for this week. Thank you for your kind attention and we hope your weekend brings you relaxation and joy.
Bill Rodgers is a contributing writer to cfile.daily.
Do you love or loathe these videos of contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.
Hi Bill,
Thank you for posting about my exhibition “Penny Byrne – Brutal.” I really appreciate it.
All the best,
Penny