Obuje: Curated by Alison Groves & Ion Fukuzawa
Past exhibition
Overview
The emerging generation of Japanese ceramicists infuses new narratives into a rich history and tradition of working with clay. Trained by Sodeisha lineage ceramicists, the ceramicists in this exhibition inherit the pursuit of technique and material experimentation as a means to express their relationship with clay. Within these boundaries, freedom to flirt with functionality and categorisation grants endless possibilities. This approach to making eludes tidy translations of art, design or craft, to invite a slower consideration of the objects and their materials. Within and beyond western defined art structures, the work is grounded by an innate obsession with materiality.
The title of this exhibition plays with the slippage of art objecthood across cultures and languages, and circles back to the familiar. Obuje is a category of Japanese ceramics adapted from the French objet d’art by the (now disbanded) Sodeisha movement. It highlights the artistic and sculptural potential of the ceramic medium—as opposed to the functional. While the sake cups, semifunctional and sculptural works in this exhibition might ultimately shrug off these words as unnecessary weight, this muddy wordy mess of context is a sandpit for ideas and appreciation, maybe exchanged over sake, ideally sipped from an interesting cup.
