The often over looked field of Applied Arts has a certain intrigue and captivating aesthetic which make it no less valuable than some of the more pronounced categories of contemporary sculpture today. Sarah Myerscough Fine Art's upcoming show Vessel seeks to challenge Fine Art's elevated status by exhibiting a wide spectrum of often large scale works from typically associative craft materials; glass, wood, and ceramic, which in form and character reflect a very tangible sculptural quality. This exhibition is on one level an extraordinary range of conceptually vivid and technically inspiring work, and on another, an exquisitely visual and tactile experience.
The often over looked field of Applied Arts has a certain intrigue and captivating aesthetic which make it no less valuable than some of the more pronounced categories of contemporary sculpture today. Sarah Myerscough Fine Art's upcoming show Vessel seeks to challenge Fine Art's elevated status by exhibiting a wide spectrum of often large scale works from typically associative craft materials; glass, wood, and ceramic, which in form and character reflect a very tangible sculptural quality. This exhibition is on one level an extraordinary range of conceptually vivid and technically inspiring work, and on another, an exquisitely visual and tactile experience.
Liam Flynn's elegant and refined wood pieces express the delicacy and intimacy found in the nature of working in wood. Indeed, to turn oak so finely requires not only a high level of expertise and patience, but a true understanding of the material; how it dries and shapes in relation to the grain is where the artist finds his unique form. Hence the maker's trace remains implicit on the wood itself. Similarly, Martin & Dowling's act of chiselling oak, which produces a beautifully scabrous and grooved texture, ensures that the final shape of the sculpture has been a compromise between the artists' hands and the oak's material attributes.
Laura Birdsall's glass sculptures, which juxtapose a fluid and burnished surface with steep and dripping edges, investigate both the exteriority and the interiority of the vessel shape. Her works appear pregnant with a microscopic world, and through the material influence of glass, she presents another divergent translation of the vessel form through a particular medium. Birdsall, by activating the play of light on and within her sculptures, also brings to our attention the intrinsic but ephemeral materiality of light inherent to working with glass.
The skill and craftsmanship involved in the production of these remarkable Applied Arts sculptures are astonishing in their depth, and are unmistakably visible in the works themselves. Rupert Spira's outstanding A Pair of Large Pots, 2007, which will be included in the show, express the high level of technique necessary to mix large scale work with the delicacy and beauty more commonly seen in smaller sculpture. Having worked largely with ceramics in the past, his work explores both the communicative and transformative potentiality of craft materials, each having the ability to transmute our experience of a particular form, and more acutely, transmute our subjective consciousness of beauty in relation to that form. Thus his work, like much of the work involved in this exhibition, investigates the relationship between external sensory phenomena and the effects these have on our internal subjective consciousness.
Vessel will include the work of nine artists, including Jonathan Keep, Sarah Scampton, Rupert Spira, Liam Flynn, Marc Ricourt, Philip Moulthrop, Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling, Carl Norbruck,(is that the right spelling) Laura Birdsall. Vessel will run from the 3rd of December 2009 until the 4th of January 2010.