Windstruck 

FADA Gallery; August -September 2021.

Viewing by appointment. Email eugeneh@uj.ac.za

Windstruck I & II.

Transferware.

 

The installation Windstruck I & II consists of two composite ceramic statements, including the remarkably finely articulated ballpoint pen drawings Eugene Hön derived his transferware from. Much as one starts enjoying a new book in its cover, upon entering Hön’s exhibition an elegant vinyl poster presents title and imagery of the windswept, alienating landscape, which first evoked the artist’s creative response.

Ballpoint pen drawing of a Hadeda 

 

The exhibition reveals its subsequent development through a visual label, consisting of various elements: a series of digital prints, folded concertina style, offer a sequential explication. This includes mind maps and both written and visual documentation of Hön’s entire research and design process.

 

Towards the end of the document a series of complex digitally enhanced floral patterns reveal types of reflection symmetry, which Graphic Design staff member, Christa van Zyl produced from the drawings. Hon shares with us all his reference material, as well as several ceramic test pieces: his firing proofs. 

Windstruck I consists of two thrown, identical egg-shaped vessels. In the bottom half of each egg-shaped vase appears a transferred drawing of a windswept landscape. The two landscapes are slightly differentiated. On one vessel a hadeda is featured and on the other a piece of driftwood, shaped like a shipwreck, with the incessant progress of a grubworm traced inside. 

The same landscapes featured in Windstruck I appear again, slightly larger, on the two circular ready-made platters of Windstruck II, along with a tall vase. In the conceptual development of the work, Hön referenced a pair of ceramic vases created during the political and economic turmoil of the French Revolution. 

These were aptly titled: Vases with scenes of storm on land[1].  The serene symmetry of the pair contain within their elegant form a great uncertainty and devastation. At the centre of the two vases bleak, monochromatic landscapes were painted, depicting figures battling a severe inland storm. The contorted trees and brazing figures are reminiscent of the mighty winds of change that swept through French society in 1789. 

 

In contrast to the French vases, the landscapes depicted in Hön’s ceramic statement are stripped bare. They are reminiscent of the valley of Desolation in the Eastern Cape.  Two anguished, wind struck trees are visible, as well as a weathered tree trunk, half submerged in barren soil. With water levels subsided, the weathered trunk has been exposed to the hot sun and dry wind of an alienating landscape. 

 

The idea of inserting landscape was originally inspired by Hön’s reading of two novels: Against nature and Quicksand, by Joris-Karl Huysman and Henning Mankell respectively [2]. Theirs are worlds from which one tries to escape. Mankell’s is a personal encounter with death[3], the author having diagnosed with cancer and terminally ill. Hon felt that their landscapes, their spaces and places experienced, resonate with our own present experience. The Covid 19 pandemic has brought us a here and now of deep despair. Death has become a common reality for many, as has financial ruin. 

Every element within Hön’s landscapes are digitally constructed from scanned black ink ballpoint pen drawings, including two hadedas, the Spandau Kop located outside the Eastern Cape town of Graaff-Reinet and the ship-like piece of driftwood, complete with a mast. Stranded in the landscape, the shipwreck’s underbelly is being eaten out by a grubworm, the only element in this desolate landscaped rendered in full colour. 

For Hön, the stranded ship recalls a once thriving South African economy; the discovery of gold on the Reef and the birth of Johannesburg, our city of gold. The artist identifies the grubworm’s incessant consumption of the shipwreck with the plight of the Zama Zamas[4], who make a meagre living in the informal mining sector, desperate times calling for desperate actions. 

 

Above the distressing landscape, tossed about by an unrelenting wind, are numerous Dandelion seeds, as applied transfers of ballpoint pen drawings. Brown veined White butterflies appear, also as applied transfers of ballpoint pen drawings. During the hot Karoo drought, these migratory butterflies take to the skies in a northeasterly direction, escaping the arid Karoo region. 

 

Central to the surface development of Hon’s ceramic vessels are his renderings of a Dandelion. In the city this hardy plant is known for surviving in paving cracks or in the hardest of soils. Commonly treated as a weed, an outcast, it thrives in the most unforeseen circumstances. On the front surface of Hon’s large pair of egg-shaped vessels and also on the two round platters, the delicate Dadelions appear in fragmented segments, floating on air above the monochromatic landscapes, rendered in ephemeral colour. Here images of Dandelions are applied in between simulated cracks quite reminiscent of the discarded shells of a boiled egg.

 

Hön first explored his own innovations with ceramic transferware work at the time of his solo exhibition at the FADA Gallery, in 2020,  titled Manufactured Distractions and Intersections. His exploration of fragmented segments reference the Japanese art of kintsugi (gold joining) and kintsukuroi (gold repair). In Japan this traditional lacquer inspired ceramic repair craft served as a metaphor for connection and for assembling separate pieces into a whole.

 

 For Hön the kintsugi ‘seams of gold’ resonate metaphorically with the plight of the local Zama Zamas (a Zulu term meaning ‘those that try to get something from nothing’) and rich gold veins of danger. For these desperate informal miners, living in Egoli, The city of Gold,  the hope of finding unmined traces of gold are rooted in a harsh, material world.

 

As our eyes follow the lines of destruction now filled with gold, we recognise at some level there is a story to be told with every crack, every chip. This story inevitably leads to kintsugi’s greatest strength: an intimate metaphoric narrative of loss and recovery, breakage and restoration, tragedy and the ability to overcome it’ (Kemske 2021:12)[5]

 

The work draws on the Kintsugi techniques of tomotsugi and more specifically of yobitsugi, patchwork repair (yobi = patched / tsugi = joining), in a re-imagined format. An approach visually simulating the age-old repair tradition of masters is created by connecting related (Tomotsugi) and unrelated fragments (Yobitsugi), which intersect on the surface of the vessel in the manipulation of digitally printed ceramic transfers of scanned ballpoint pen drawings. The transfers are applied to both the vessels and the platters. 

 

Celebrating decoration as restoration 

 

Hön states: “The work celebrates decoration as restoration in direct response to Modernism’s mantra that ornament and adornment is a crime. The reimagined yobitsugi repaired vessels, albeit simulated, to use the words of Kemske (2021:) in regard to the practice of Kintsugi, ‘speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and renewal and re-invention in this difficult time of pandemic and the imperatives of global climate change’. 

In both ceramic statements in the installation, my narrative of renewal and re-invention during these desperate times is captured in the rendition of the Dandelion seeds and the migratory Brown veined white butterflies, as they are transported on the wind. Visually these elements manifest from fragmented surfaces on the front of the vessels and platters to a celebration of patternmaking on the back of the vessels. The Dandelion seeds, the butterflies and the grubworm are swept up by the relentless wind into an elaborate and complex digitally enhanced whirligig-like mandala of patterns of reflection symmetry drawn from the original drawings”.

 

Conceptually speaking Eugene Hön found an important source in Floressas Des Esseintes, the main character in the novel written by Joris -Karl Huysman, titled Against Nature (A Rebours). Floressas’ escape from reality into an imaginary world is best articulated in the following quotes from the novel:

 

‘Already he had begun dreaming of a refined Thebaid, a desert hermitage equipped with all the modern conveniences, a snugly heated ark on dry land in which he might take refuge from the incessant deluge of human stupidity’ (2021:21).

 

‘Travel, indeed, struck him as being a waste of time, since he believed that the imagination could provide a more than adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of actual experience. In his opinion, it was perfectly possible to fulfil those desires commonly supposed to be the most difficult to satisfy under normal conditions, and this by the trifling subterfuge of producing a fair imitation of the object of those desires’ (2021:8).

 

 

The viewer is transported into the windstruck landscape, evoked by the imagery on the ceramic vessels on display and their surface development. A celebration of patternmaking offers an escape into the beauty thereof, as does a momentary immersion in the pleasure of experiencing handcrafted excellence. 

 

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[1] Vase with scenes of storm on land, Dihl et Guérhard (French, 1781–ca. 1824) (Manufacture de Monsieur Le Duc d’Angoulême, until 1789), Possibly painted by Jean-Baptiste Coste (French, 1777–1819). Ca 1790-95. Hard-paste porcelain. These two vases were made at the time of the French Revolution, at a factory that was located in the heart of Revolutionary Paris. Decorated with landscapes depicting severe inland storms, the people in both landscapes are at the mercy of the wild forces of nature. These scenes, highly unusual for French porcelain, may perhaps be seen as a reflection of the tumultuous times during which the vases were produced.

[2] Quicksand was written after Mankel was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The book was published posthumously. Quicksand is not a book about death and destruction, but about what it means to be human.

[3] The reading of Mankell’s book, Quicksand, stems from my personal encounter with the death of my own brother and father. In the words of the author, ‘the book is about how humanity has lived and continues to live, and about how I have lived and continue to live my own life’. life’. And, not least, about the great zest for life, which came back when I managed to drag myself out of the quicksand that threatened to suck me down into the abyss’.

 

[4] Forced to ply their trade in crumbling industrial shafts where a fatal collapse is just as likely as stumbling across a deposit worth the effort, they are perpetually preyed upon by a coterie of criminal cartels who often count the police among their number. With little to no alternatives, the group perseveres regardless. — here we take a closer look at how the recession of South Africa’s mining industry was just the first chapter in what has since developed into a bloody and brutal illicit scramble for gold.https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/zama-zama-gold-south-africa/#

 

 

[5] Kemske, Bonnie. 2021. Kintsugi: The Poetic Mend. London, Herbert Press.

Pop Couture – Developing the Ceramic Idea and Concept.

This is the first blog entry, in a series, outlining the developing of a new idea / concept in the design and manufacture of a range of ceramic products titled Pop Couture. The ceramic work will take the form and shape of popcorn. 

Presented here are preparatory ballpoint pen renderings and one or two finished drawings, showcasing the development of the form and shape for the manufacture of the ceramic products. The ceramics will be slip cast in porcelain and or bone china and individually decorated to create one-of-a-kind expressive ceramic statement.

As the title suggests the ceramic work will incorporate and make reference to Pop Art and Haute couture.  Two quotes below provide a glimpse into the thinking behind the work and possible creative outcomes. Various books have and will influence my thinking, they include; Art and Authenticity, Thomas Heatherwick MAKING, The Hare with Amber Eyes, Manufractured, Fragiles and Digital Handmade (recently acquired). The specifics of which will be explained in future blog posts.

Pop Art exploded onto the art scene on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1960s. Suddenly a few artists turned against the long-standing art world aversion to bourgeois culture and liberated the use of popular materials and methods. They recognised that their material image banks and those of their audience, as well, came not from the Bible or Classical myth, or novels and plays, or even history but from films, adverts, television and comics. The works of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein played with references from every day life and fashion to make bold, vibrant art that initiated and artistic revolution during the post-war flowering of a consumer culture , spearheaded by developments in the US. (Bradford R, 2012: end cover).

Haute couture; French for "high sewing" or "high dressmaking" or "high fashion") refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is high-end fashion that is constructed by hand from start to finish, made from high quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable sewers, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking" but may also refer to fashion, sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and refers to the same thing in spirit. (Wikipedia as cited on 11 December 2015)

The rendered ideas on paper require further investigation, refining of the form and shape from a surface development perspective.  The surface is what will receive major attention in the individually crafted bespoke products. The overall form and shape of the popcorn will remain the same. It is vital that a simplified form and shape be designed (stylised), conducive to a variety of surface development options – either hand painted, digital crafted decals and specially formulated glazes. Various sizes will be created to explore one-of-a-kind ceramic statements and installations (small, medium and large). This will be achieved by modelling the desired form and shape in Y2 modelling Clay. The prototype will then be photographed and scanned, using the latest technology (3D printing), to produce a variety of sizes, end products for moulding and slip casting.

My prime aim and objective will be to create ceramics that celebrates the handmade in a digital age in the context of globalisation. Various surfaces development techniques and methods will be embraced to express myself. In some works I will exploit my own ballpoint pen drawings skills to create one-of-a-kind digitally printed decals on a variety of themes. Hopefully I can capitalise on the latest technology to create authentic ceramic surface techniques in keeping with the title of the works.

Emphasis will be placed on the bespoke, celebrating the handmade. Another idea will be to celebrate the skills of the unknown craftspeople, paying homage to the artisan, in the creation of contemporary ceramic “couture” statements. The details of which will be explored further in future blog posts.

The work will be a return to the design and manufacture of ceramic sculptures, my first love as a student and emerging artist. The envisaged end product falls within the scope of the focus of my creative output in the past few years. I am very happy that the end product will be a ceramic work, in form and shape as well as in the development of appropriate ceramic surfaces.