CERAMIC MATERIAL CULTURE
Tales of the Everyday Decorative : A Ceramic Archive
Shards and fragments from ornamental figurines are held together in these works. Signifiers of the expansive journeys undertaken by manufactured objects, they carry their tales of global trade, relationships of exchange between east and west, of market economies and the chains of supply and demand.
The origins, journeys and destinies of everyday domestic decorative objects are contained in these works. Once treasured, now shattered and prepared for landfill they are reflective snapshots of a world in continual fluctuation captured at this moment in time.
Charged with conflicting narratives, the contemporary meaning of these broken pieces are fused with their past histories. Ceramic representations of pastoral idylls in technicolour hues and the gentile pursuits of afternoon tea and musical soirees retain echoes of longing for their past curious charm. Objects once vital to the livelihoods of their makers, invested with sentiment by their collectors, now damaged and diminished, yet suffused with these lingering remembrances.
Deposits of social history, these whimsical ceramics contain the flux of perpetual change. In preserving this moment of transition, in gathering up the pieces, this work glimpses a moment of social history through the journeys of decorative figurines. Small enduring ceramic symbols of passing mores, wistful markers of time and change.
Rag Picker, Detective, Collector [1]
Lisa Allan’s work is a creative analysis of ceramic material culture, exploring processes of alteration, renewal and transformation.
Ceramic heritage is the raw material she interrogates and the inspirational source in generating new work. Objects of accumulated decorative ceramic have undergone a reconsideration and the intention has been changed, from display in the home, to public stage.
Ready-made figurines have artistic authenticity, gained through their entanglement in our lives. They are emblematic of the pathos of our past longings, that we once desired, but have now rejected. Containers of this ambivalent energy, they oscillate between these two opposing states, posing unsettling complexities.
Side-stepping established boundaries of material and manufacture, the work seeks to make new connections in the slippage between creative processes. Instant 3D printing technology engages with time invested kiln firings, ancient clay processes encompass industrial casting for plastics, advocating disobedient relationships between the objects.
In this process of regeneration, forms are altered, dissected or assembled, made gigantic or made miniature, with each intervention paying tribute to the original. Harmonious or incongruous, the work aims to animate a shifting dialogue between the forms.
In the flux of our material culture, china figurines may seek redemption and transcend their trash status.
[1] See ‘The Arcades Project’, Collected Writings (1927-40) by Walter Benjamin