contents introduction 03 barnaby barford 04 stephen bird 08 penny byrne 10 stephen dixon 14 amy douglas 18 ingrid murphy 20 acknowledgements 24
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Historic buildings of potteries with bottle oven located on banks of Trent and Mersey canal in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire,Uk
introduction The mass-produced figures created primarily in Staffordshire from the 18th century onwards are so familiar to us. The potters created naïve portrait busts and flatbacks which reveal much about the time and circumstances in which they were made. They were created cheaply to be available to all, some were purely decorative, but many celebrated the lives of politicians, criminals, entertainers, national heroes and royalty. They have almost become part of our national identity, a staple of British homes and mantlepieces for hundreds of years. This exhibition brings together a group of artists who make reference to this tradition, exploring clay techniques as well as our humanity and humour. Their work has a powerful ability to engage the viewer, with works which are at first so familiar but on closer inspection subvert the genre with surreal and contemporary narratives. Penny Byrne, like many of the artists in the exhibition uses found ceramic figures, adapting and adding to them to comment on the world she sees around her. The familiarity and comfort of these old figures is disturbed in works like EuropaEuropa where small pastoral figures are placed in teacup boats with bright orange life vests commenting the ongoing migrant and refugee crisis across Europe. This subversion of the familiar is also seen in the work of Barnaby Barford where mass produced found objects are turned into sinister yet humorous sculptures. The sentimental figures become characters in his narratives which comment on contemporary
politics and society. Stephen Bird draws on the traditions of folk-art creating works which are both political and personal, using and referencing the commercially made ceramics he grew up around, it’s heritage as an industry and the effect those objects have had on our everyday lives. Stephen Dixon satirical works are influenced by museum collections and contemporary political events such as Brexit and Trump’s presidency, incorporating classical, mythological as well as pop culture figures. Amy Douglas works with broken Staffordshire ware, using the point of where the piece is broken as a starting point for the surreal narratives she creates. She uses tradition restoration techniques and is interested in the past ownership of the objects, the stories connected and retold through them. Ingrid Murphy is interested in how we connect and interact with domestic objects, she 3D scans traditional Staffordshire ware, inserting her own face, QR codes, electrical components and touch sensitive sound triggers. The emotions and reactions we have to these seemingly familiar objects are subverted by the use of technology and overt political statements on subjects such as Brexit. All the works in this exhibition are surprising, thought provoking, often funny. Reflecting modern thoughts and commentary on social history, politics as well as personal stories. They are a physical manifestation of our life and times.
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barnaby barford
Left: Do it again I didn’t press record (Detail) Below: Does that mean we’re not getting any presents? (Detail) (The Good The Bad The Belle Series) 2009
London-based artist Barnaby Barford works across drawing, sculpture, film, installation and painting. Using ‘Words’ and ‘the Apple’, he explores the fundamental questions driving human nature, and especially our anxiety afflicted society and our incessant need for More. Barnaby Barford uses familiar iconography to subvert the telling of ancient cautionary tales within a contemporary context. His research explores the fundamental questions driving human nature in terms of morality, conflict between good or evil, lack of happiness, and society’s incessant need for growth. Although Barford produces work in a wide variety of materials, he consistently returns to ceramics, utilising mass and industrial production processes. From the monumental sculptures composed of thousands of individual ceramic pieces to the large-scale energetic word drawings that repeat incessantly the same word, his pieces are a labour intensive accumulation
of fragments that gain meaning in their totality. Barnaby Barford has been represented by David Gill Gallery since 2005. He has exhibited internationally, with major solo shows across Europe and the US, including a survey show at MOCA Virginia (2013). His work is part of many public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas; the National Museum, Sweden; and the National Libraries of France and the Netherlands. Early porcelain figurines by the artist offered a witty cultural critique, reflecting on the folly of man with a satire akin to Chaucer and Hogarth. Originally curated by Andrée Cook at Spring Projects (London) in 2009, Barford’s ‘The Good The Bad The Belle’ series of focused pieces explored ideas of lost youth in today’s society. The work looked at eating habits, violence, education, gang culture and the media’s vilification of children and young people.
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Above: Do it again, I didn’t press record (The Good The Bad The Belle Series) 2009
barnaby barford
Above: Does that mean we’re not getting any presents? (The Good The Bad The Belle Series) 2009
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stephen bird
Left: The house at Acacia Creek, 2014 Below: Arbitrary Tree, 2015
Stephen Bird creates narratives which explore alternative realities with transgressive themes such as cruelty, war, natural disasters, unnatural affections and violent deaths. His works are located in the extremes of the tragic comic tradition. Using visual metaphors, psychological scaling, and random inclusions, Stephen reinterprets old myths and appropriate iconography from established English pottery traditions; a stiff pastoral scene from Spode, a decorative Royal Doulton tile, or the cabbage leaf from a Wedgewood Whieldon teapot. Through the medium of ceramics Stephen investigates humanity’s relationship with objects. He creates multidimensional imagery which reflects on the global, transcultural nature of myths and ceramic archetypes. Stephen’s interests include comic books and English figure and slipware traditions. He is particularly interested in Staffordshire ceramic figure groups from the 18th century which contain implicit meanings and often he will try to decipher their
meanings and re-imagine these in explicit ways. The 3 works in this exhibition where made in a period when Stephen was discovering his Australian heritage. As an Australian citizen, learning about colonial times can be a painful experience. This traumatic beginning has created a genre referred to as Australian Melancholia. The works refer to a place called Acacia Creek where his pioneer ancestor, Ralph Reid settled and raised his family of 14 children. Ralph emigrated from Kingussie, Scotland in 1842 due to the Highland Clearances which had begun after the Jacobite Rebellion and continued into the 20th century. Eventually he succumbed to the harshness of the Australian landscape when his healthy sheep began pining away and dying. Ralph later died by his own hand. His grave was re-discovered in the corner of a field in Acacia Creek in 2013. Stephen has been awarded many prizes and was the winner of The Gold Coast International Ceramic Award, 2016 and the Deacon University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, 2011.
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penny byrne
Left: #EuropaEuropa series (Lady in gravy boat), 2017 Below: #EuropaEuropa series (Boy in jug), 2017
The works of Penny Byrne are at once highly political and beautiful. Consistently working with ceramics, she combines vintage porcelain figures with other materials and objects that disrupt and unsettle the original figure. Sometimes Byrne paints text and motifs directly onto the porcelain surface or uses objects such as vintage Action Man accessories and decorative glass ornaments to bring radically alternate stories to these familiar domestic figurines. Her recent pieces reference conflicts and protests connected to global political affairs such as the Occupy Movement and events in Syria, giving these characters voices and new lives which are far removed from their original purposes as
meek shepherdesses or farm girls feeding ducks. Byrne’s meticulously manipulated ceramics are saturated, too, with wry humour. Byrne is based in Melbourne, Australia and holds a BA in Fine Art Ceramics. In 2015 she will be showing in the Venice Biennale, a project in collaboration with the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The artist has won several awards and prizes, and has shown her work extensively in the UK, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Notable exhibitions include those at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, The Gallery of Western Australia and Saatchi Gallery in London. She is represented by Coates & Scarry in the UK.
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penny byrne
Left (Detail) and Above: In Happier Times (Gaddafi’s Gal Guards Guarding Gaddafi) 2011
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stephen dixon
Left: Now then Captain lad, 1995 Below: Hats, 1995
Stephen Dixon is Professor of Contemporary Crafts at Manchester School of Art. His career as a maker is defined by a commitment to politically engaged practice, and a belief in the power of craft to engage the public imagination and to make a difference. As an academic and researcher as well as a maker, his practice engages with the narrative and decorative traditions of figurative ceramics, and brings this rich visual vocabulary to bear on contemporary issues. He studied Fine Art at Newcastle University followed by an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art. Early exhibitions in London with Contemporary Applied Arts and the Crafts Council established a reputation for ceramics with a biting political and social satire. Anatol Orient introduced Dixon’s figurative vessels to the U.S.A., resulting in solo exhibitions at Pro-Art, St. Louis, Garth Clark Gallery, New York and Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York. Dixon’s politically engaged ceramic practice was comprehensively surveyed
in a major solo exhibition ‘The Sleep of Reason’, a twenty-year retrospective at Manchester Art Gallery in 2005. He was awarded the inaugural V&A ceramics studio residency in 2009, where he embarked on a new body of work exploring political portraiture. Dixon combines his studio ceramic practice with regular forays into public and community arts; In 2000 he received an Arts Council Year of the Artist award for ‘Asylum’, a collaborative project with Amnesty International U.K. and Kosovan refugees and in 2021 ‘The Ship of Dreams and Nightmares’ was selected as the winner of the AWARD prize at the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent. His work features in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Arts & Design New York, the British Council, the Crafts Council, the V&A, the Everson Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
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stephen dixon
Left: The Trumposaurus, 2019 Centre: Cultural Assimilation, 2019 Right: The Good Ship Brexit, 2019
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amy douglas
Left: “I shall be phenomenal to the women,” 2016 Below: Zuckerbergic Hellmouth, 2016
Amy Douglas creates sculptural works from found broken Staffordshire pottery figurines. Surreal interventions connected to the original body of the pottery. Where the piece is broken directs what it is that she can do. Thoughtfully and often with humour fusing narrative and historical context to create a unique and extraordinary object for our extraordinary times. Amy often works with traditional restoration techniques. She has formed her own version of an extreme kintsugi repair with the craft of gesso and gilding materials, using recipes from the 14th century, she creates and re-invents these objects, from English pottery, to a folk art reloaded. Amy has always been interested in the narrative that comes with the ownership of objects. Hereditary tales of families and individuals becomes integral to the story of the inanimate.
She believes our knick knacks are the props in the stories of our lives, loves and travels, our personal folktales. Amy reads folktales, myths and legends from around the world, which often are the same story in a different guise, a collective consciousness. Amy likes to play with her sculptures and subvert things around, connecting the present to the past and hoping people look twice in our inattentive intangible world. To listen to the stories. Amy’s work has been shown in New York at The Jack Hanley Gallery and is currently on show at Paul Smith Albermarle St Mayfair, London. Her work features in numerous private collections around the world.
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ingrid murphy
Left and below: She danced him into a flat spin, 2019
Ingrid Murphy is an Irish ceramic artist and academic based in Wales. Ingrid combines traditional making skills with digital technologies to create interactive artefacts. Her research focuses on reimagining or augmenting domestic or historical ceramic objects to create new and engaging experiences. The work ‘She Danced Him into a Flat Spin’ was created by 3D scanning an historical Staffordshire figurine in a virtual reality environment, scaling it to human size and dancing with the figure, the resulting digital objects were then 3D printed and cast in ceramics, frequently Ingrid exploits the conductivity of the bronze glaze and gold lustre decoration to be used as a circuitry to create touch interactivity.
The supporting film included in the exhibition shows how the work was produced using dance in a VR environment. Combining new and emergent technologies with the physical properties of ceramic materials enables the objects to become increasingly more interactive and interconnected. Ingrid’s academic research explores how new technologies can influence how we both experience and teach craft. A UK National Teaching Fellow Ingrid is a Principal Lecturer at Cardiff School of Art & Design, where she leads the schools FabCre8 interdisciplinary research group.
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ingrid murphy
Left and Above: She danced him into a flat spin, 2019
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acknowledgements figuratively
A Llantarnam Grange Exhibition Published by Llantarnam Grange ©LG 2021 Llantarnam Grange is a part of Arts Council Wales ‘Arts Portfolio Wales’ Registered Charity no: 1006933. Company Limited by Guarantee no: 2616241 Llantarnam Grange is funded by the Arts Council of Wales and Torfaen County Borough Council. This publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the publisher. With thanks to: The Scottish Gallery as the UK representative of Stephen Bird Coates and Scarry as the UK representative of Penny Byrne Messums Wiltshire as the UK representative of Stephen Dixon Parade Design
Llantarnam Grange St David’s Road, Cwmbran Torfaen, NP44 1PD 01633 483321 llantarnamgrange.com
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