Episode: 2^nd Virginia McClure Ceramic Biennale

Exhibition: October 28 to November 26, 2016
Vernissage: Thursday, October 27 at 6 pm

Épisode is curated by invited artist/curator Linda Swanson. The exhibition features four artists whose works speak not only to excellence and innovation in ceramics, but to its relevance as a discipline that allows for a specifically corporeal, embodied articulation of contemporary human experience. Swanson’s choice of artists — Phoebe Cummings (Stafford, UK), Benjamin DeMott (Chicago, U.S.), Janet Macpherson (Toronto, Canada) and Meghan Smythe (Los Angeles, U.S.) — has resulted in an inspiring, materially seductive exhibition. Indeed, there is something collectively subversive about their work — subversive in the sense of undermining staid narratives, restrictive tropes, or assumptions about our perceived reality. Each artist recognizes the historical heritage of ceramics, yet offers a highly original and imaginatively provocative vision. Épisode is the second of five biennales taking place between 2014 and 2022.

Phoebe Cummings works across art, design and ceramics to create ephemeral raw clay installations that respond to conditions of site and address the historical while becoming wholly contemporary.

Benjamin DeMott’s practice based on a compassionate awareness and sensibility centers on a dialogue with materiality as a playful pilgrimage into situations of uncertainty.

Janet Macpherson employs animal forms from popular culture to address distinctly human concerns such as religion and our relationship to the natural world.

Meghan Smythe’s figural ceramic sculptures catch characters in a tangled paradox of contradictory extremes: intimacy and brutality, beauty and ugliness; lewdness and tenderness.

Linda Swanson’s artistic interests are grounded in the metamorphic nature of ceramic materials and processes with her work engaging the enigmatic properties of matter at an elemental level.

Episode : 2^nd Virginia McClure Ceramic Biennale

76 pages (48 colour reproductions)
french / english
ISBN : 978 –1-926492-11-7
McClure Gallery, 2016
available: McClure Gallery
$ 24.95 + tx