Ceramic flowers and plants
From 22 January up to and including 19 September 2021
Keramiekcentrum Tiendschuur Tegelen organises an ‘organic ceramic art’ exhibition: about nature that offers beauty, surprise and consolation, the last of which we really need in these times. The reassuring sight of nature that carries on in spite of everything. Leaves turning colour and falling, buds that will open up again in spring and spoil us with flowers, petals and fruits in the most wonderful shapes. The beauty of the plant world can be overwhelming and has been an important source of inspiration for artists for many centuries. Let yourself be inspired, touched and comforted by nature caught in ceramics by artists from home and abroad. View more: Virtual Museum More Organics.
Artists of all times and of all possible disciplines catch nature in their work. Paintings, drawings and photographs are the best-known expressions. This exhibition, however, shows that this theme can also be represented sculpturally in a beautiful way. In 2016, we already organised an exhibition based on this theme. The reason for a second edition is that there are so many more artists using this theme in their work who, each in their own unique way, translate nature into beautiful ceramic sculptures.
You can see, for instance, real-life porcelain fragile flowers made by Nausika Raes (BE). Safely protected under an old-fashioned glass bell or framed behind glass, they can be admired.
Eliane Monnin from France makes modest shapes showing a stylised plant world, with subtle tones and decorative shapes and patterns reminding one of buds, cactuses and succulents.
Similar subtle tones, but now painted, are to be found in the work from Claudia Winter (DE). She adds flowers to her work with only a few quick brushstrokes, resulting in attractive and impressionist décors.
Danish Malene Hartmann-Rasmussen makes exuberant and highly realistic ceramic flowers and plants with brightly coloured glazes. She then combines the vegetable parts into new surrealistic, fairy-tale sculptures. The Scandinavian stories about trolls and fairies come to life in her work.
Wietske Van Leeuwen’s (NL) work is also playful and multicoloured. She builds dishes with peppers and artichokes. The visitor’s taste and smell buds are challenged by her towers of garlic bulbs and other tasty vegetable combinations.
Cheerful also is Johann Fine’s decorative slipware, or rather “terre vernissé”, for he is a French ceramicist. The sunny Southern-French Moustiers-Sainte-Marie is reflected in his exuberant work full of poppies, irises and honeysuckle.
Even more French atmospheres can be enjoyed in Sylvie Piaud’s work, with warm and lively decorations, in which it looks as if the more stylised flowers and plant patterns are dancing off her work.
In addition to this multicoloured extravaganza, there is a lot of other work to be seen. Purely white, but absolutely organic. There is the work, for example, from Corrie Bain (GB) with enormous flower heads made of countless tender porcelain petals. Creating one such sculpture takes some 5 months’ work!
Highly labour-intensive as well are the fascinating and complex porcelain structures by Nuala O’Donovan from Ireland. In her work, leaf and flower structures can be seen overgrowing artificial shapes in the way ivy can cover a building. In addition to petal structures, she also makes organic structures reminding one of skeletons and corals.
Whereas O’Donovan emphasises complexity, Barbro Åberg from Denmark, on the contrary, makes the organic shapes simpler. She sobers the original examples down to beautiful stylised and more robust sponge shapes and corals.
Thérèse Lebrun from Belgium also gets inspiration from the sea. Her tender, almost transparent porcelain work reminds one of acorn barnacles, corals, and seed boxes or enlargements of cells.
Edith Tergau’s (NL) work is definitely inspired by the organic world, but then seen through a magnifying glass, or better still, through a microscope. Her work shows wondrous cell-like sculptures, enlarged thousands of times and captured in ceramics.
Christine Möhring’s (DE) work, finally, also reminds one of cell structures and organic growth shapes. Part of it is inspired by coral, which, strictly speaking, aren’t plants but tiny animals and their tiny houses made of chalk. But it is definitely natural and organic. Her shapes literally look as if they are growing on the walls of the exhibition room.
Opening
The exhibition opens on Friday 22 January 2021. Due to Corona, the opening will take place without an audience. Conservator Sacha Odenhoven will present an introduction which can be watched on the website afterwards.
Participating artists
Barbro Åberg (DK) Corrie Bain (GB); Nuala O’Donovan (IE); Johann Fine (FR); Thérèse Lebrun (BE); Wietske Van Leeuwen (NL); Christine Möhring (DE); Eliane Monnin (FR); Sylvie Piaud (FR); Nausika Raes (BE); Malene Hartmann-Rasmussen (DK); Edith Tergau (NL); Claudia Winter (DE).
The artists below will be present in person during the exhibition and give demonstrations, lectures and/or guided tours:
- 28 February 14:00 Edith Tergau (NL)
View more: Virtual Museum More Organics
